Wednesday Braemar 50 星期三校園50

WednesdayBraemar50

50

Edited byLucas Tse

InterviewersAshley Chung, Isaac Lee, Lucas Tse, Emily Tsui and Shirley Yuen

TypesetterBenjamin Chasnov

Cover DesignKaitlin Chan

First released in 2012

Contents

Introduction iv

Chinese 漢基 1Sow Fun Dawson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2Ted Faunce 方 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Bin Li . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6Anney Ku Lay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Victor Loong ’10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Alina Luk ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12Sha Luo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Andrew Mumm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15Konberg Ngai 國成 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18Johnson Pak ’14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Ken Pemberton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Sylvia Roldán . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23Amy Tai ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Tom Winderam 文 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26K H Wong 國 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Gongming Yan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Abigail Yee ’17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

International 國際 33David Brian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34Trina Chan ’07 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Caroline Chin ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40Martin Cubbon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43Brian Liu ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45Brian Mulcahy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47Lucy Reading ’13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Tika Sing Bishwakarma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53Maureen Trebilcock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Laszlo Varro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Simon Watts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

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Contents

School 學校 63Kellie Alexander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Kate Brashear 文 ’14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68Jonathan Chan 同 ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Kaitlin Chan ’13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Jeremy Chen ’15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76Micah Cook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78James Dunlap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Allen Frost . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Vera Lummis ’14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Brian Kern . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Kolleen Ku ’12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92Yi-Wei Liu ’11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94Holly Mak ’07 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96Martin Matsui . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99Glen Morgan 年 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101Francis Newman ’14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104Kevin Quinn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106Su-Mei Thompson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109Darren Tong ’16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Denis Tse ’15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114Nico Vallone ’16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Claire Yeo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119Bok Wai Yeung ’13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

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為，以為為之，有以為

老

The two points selected by which to measure the worth of a formof social life are the extent in which the interests of a group areshared by all its members, and the fullness and freedom withwhich it interacts with other groups. An undesirable society,in other words, is one which internally and externally sets upbarriers to free intercourse and communication of experience.

John Dewey

Lousy Wednesday, Sweet Thursday: An Introduction

I

“How do you feel about Wednesday”?Hundreds of thousands of teenagers—and inevitably, astray parents—have

sat puzzled before the University of Chicago’s legendary admissions prompts.This past winter, I was one of them. The annual scramble for universitiesis a highlight on many calendars; for me, the thrill has been unreal. For thefirst time, really, I held my future in one hand. (And my parents’ worriesin the other.) I wanted to absorb into my mind all the possibilities, to casta net as wide as I could and not, at the end of my undergraduate—and life-long—education, discover I had missed out on what might have been. ByOctober, I was seriously considering nine countries on four continents. If Icouldn’t attend every institution, I wished to at least imagine myself in themyriad milieus. Fourteen schools, in three countries, eventually received myapplication.

I interviewed at two schools during term—first Oxford in December, thenDeep Springs in January. I attempt no facile comparison here, but one facetof Deep Springs, shrouded in December, caught my attention—ownership.The people of Deep Springs did not only coexist as a group of people, theybought into and mutually participated in a genuine community—which hadto be perpetually negotiated and wrestled with, but unmistakably existed.Each individual was granted great responsibility, which came in the dualform of incentive and accountability. The school was coterminous with itspopulation; a sustained and committed dialectic between the individual andthe institution afforded each party an incredible capacity for discovery andreinvention.

So I returned to CIS, and Chicago’s question to me. Of my overflowingfeelings for this Wednesday, that towards CIS was unresolved dissatisfac-tion—rooted in my belief that the place I cared about and called homewas unfulfilled. As I peered out off the Block Two balcony, my hopes anddisappointments of seven years congealed, along a tripartite path, into theembryo of this enterprise.

CIS is disconnected. There may be communities within CIS, but is therea school community? I’m not sure, maybe the shadow of one—certainly not

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one I’d be content with. I can speak best from my experience, limited asit is, of staff-student dynamics as a dichotomy. Students are still treated,by most of the leadership and some of the faculty, as receiving objects in abanking education—the exceptions are too few, and progress too slow. Theaverage student’s capacity for interaction with both curricula and schoollife is minuscule. How will kids ever grow up if you only ever treat themas such? I perceive both inter- and intra-demographic stratification beyondthis first dichotomy, among the faculty, support staff, administration, Boardand parents. A divorce between structural and lived experiences ensues; be-tween strategic visions and everyday decisions, official syllabi and classroomteaching, IB results and intellectual spirit. We hoist superstructure uponsuperstructure, until we misconceive the bird’s eye view as the waterline ofreality. Segregated by our ordained positions, we rapidly spiral into multi-velocity.

CIS is closed. Vibrant communities thrive on plurality, and yet a cul-ture of silence festers within our walls, an attitude that, simply put, teachesthe individual to stay low, shut up and drift along without sound and fury.Until Year 11, I was never asked to provide feedback for a class; I have wit-nessed, personally and vicariously, the arbitrariness and non-transparencyof the so-called disciplinary procedures; and I cannot within the recessesof my memory recollect a single sustained mode of public discourse in myyears here. (There has been sporadic and limited discourse; as the 2010–11Student Council, we hosted the inaugural Town Hall, and two AcademicHonesty forums have been organized this year by our successors.) CIS runson a closed, one-dimensional hierarchy—top-down command, bottom-up ac-countability—that hampers, and sometimes forbids, organic and free expres-sion; and a closed universe can ultimately only succumb to the gravity of itsown weight. For a more detailed reading into CIS’ progress, I recommendthe Human Rights Group’s report, due to be released on June 12.

Most profoundly, CIS is scared. In my experience, our behavior—be itschool policy or a student’s daily decisions—is overwhelmingly governed bypersonal or collective specters rather than constructive hope. We have oiledour cogs with threats and fears; now, we are afraid even of ourselves. Fearmanifests itself most starkly with the need to control; the missing pagesof this book attest to the effect of such a culture. (Some have retractedstatements, and a few have asked to be entirely removed. Many more haveexpressed concern and anxiety over the appropriateness and consequencesof their interviews.) The school’s policies over technology unmistakablyreveal such an inclination: punishment has been questionably meted outfor supposed infringements of the vague blog policy, the emergence of thelaptop program was in need of open deliberation and our beloved Moongatehas not a single opportunity for student input—we spectate, hushed, as thetides of information crash against our screens.

Unable to fully tap into the initiative and imagination of individuals,

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CIS today is a poor excuse of what it could be, and thus of what it shouldbe. I believe it is the site of spectacular waste, palpable or impalpable, inpart because we have yet to understand this: dissent is not disloyalty. It isnot skepticism, nor parrhesia—not even indefatigable lamentation—that arewithout hope, but apathy and servility. Dissent indeed may well underpinthe “dynamic education”—for which “what is learned in the classroom willbe drawn from life, and pertinent to life”—Nelly Fung spoke of to ChristiniaCheung in 1982. A place without disagreement is a place without people,and leadership of the highest order comes not from suppression but withlegitimacy. To empower a community is to invite the struggles and incon-veniences of democracy. But I cannot imagine a better education, and inthe end, it is the only kind worth having.

We must not teach ourselves out of curiosity and courage. We must notstigmatize expression and suffocate thought. We must act not only as anintermediary caretaker—a CIS education must say something more. Let usnot be shipwrecked on vanity. We have come too far to jettison our cause.

II

“The primary sustainable competitive advantage of CIS is the strengthof the CIS community itself. There is, on the part of our faculty, students,parents, governors and increasingly, our alumni, a total commitment to theschool’s well being”—so the Strategic Vision was introduced. If this com-mitment survives to any degree, it does so in a fragile mold, and as theschool is now run, it may not prove too sustainable an advantage.

The pages that follow represent a cross-section of perspectives from aparticular March Wednesday in CIS’ evolution. (All interviews but those ofCIS parents and Allen Frost were done live on campus.) The book attempts,however imperfectly, to capture the total zeitgeist of our so-called communitywith fragments directed from neither below nor above, but inclusively, fromwithin. It is an attempt to salve the disconnections that cripple CIS’ growth,and to serve as a preface to more substantial dialogue in the public sphereof the school; its chapters are loose parameters to explore our identity andprogress.

Our Chinese identity informs, and is informed by, our behavioral pat-terns. Its presence and absence dictate our self-recognition and outwardperception. Our goals for and beyond the curriculum must especially beconsidered within our geographical and postcolonial context. Do we remainafflicted with what Chinua Achebe, referring to his native Nigeria, termed a“crisis of the soul”? What is in place to cultivate such an identity, and whatshould be? How can and should such initiatives as the CCC contribute?

I conceive of our international identity as twofold. First, what is theinternational dimension of our school, or how can our international identitybe defined along other sets of axes? Are the global and local identities

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Introduction

mutually exclusive? Secondly, what is our relationship to all that beyondour gates? This March, our Chief Executive was once again elected in asmall-circle election; problems on the mainland and beyond our borders areno less insurmountable. How are we preparing our students for the world,and serving the world with our students? The enigma of responsibilitypersists; the parties to which we are accountable are indefinite.

And we are a school. I have offered a sketch of my CIS experience, butwho might be held accountable? Who has been responsible for getting ushere, and who will carry us forward? The time I’ve spent here—be it am-bling down hallways, discussing in meetings the purported inappropriatenessof LGBT-related events or leading the rugby team on its first internationaltour this January—has borne witness to CIS’ struggle with its identity: asa sports school, as performing arts center, as the object of external accredi-tation and internal evaluation, as an institution of myriad stakeholders andone mission. The role of technology has recently, under the 2008 StrategicPlan and one-to-one laptop program, become central to both policy and ex-perience. Yet I do wonder: why do we aspire for the technology of tomorrowwhen we have yet to realize the pedagogy of yesterday?

III

We are the Braemar Generation. Most of us have never known CISin any other locale; many have forgotten why it exists, and others havenever known. We flirt with eventual self-destruction, unless we reconsiderthe questions that have brought us thus far; not in closed meetings in theConference Room or a token assembly for the chosen few to pontificate, butwith the creation of an open space for us all, teacher and student, tall andshort, old and new, loud and quiet, to speak honestly and to solve problems.

I freely admit this book is flawed and insufficient. It is student-centricin conception and adult-centric in interview content. It focuses on the sec-ondary school in a comprehensive institution. It’s chiefly monolingual. Thetranscription often wavers between clarity and literalness. The demographicdistribution of the interviewees is broader than that of any CIS publicationI’ve yet read, but remains disproportional. But I believed in it enough tospend months on it, and here I am, on my post-graduation vacation, scrib-bling away. I hope you can make sense of these pages.

The road ahead will be long and hard—it pains me to imagine the waythrough treacherous landscape. Still, any improvement to our conditionbegins in the recognition of its present inadequacy. The only path is de-liberation, examination, and re-examination. Deep Springs gets it; CIS,however incomparable with a school of twenty six pupils, cannot afford tosquander the dedication and ideas of its people. My time here has come andgone. I may well be irrelevant. But you must not falter before this lousyWednesday, so you may welcome the aurora. I thank the interviewers for

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Introduction

their toil and the interviewees for each sharing a leaf of her thought; KaitlinChan and Ben Chasnov, too, for lending their talents, and Denis Tse forhelping with transcription. And I thank you for caring enough to have comethis far—I dispute the existence and sincerity of “a total commitment tothe school’s well being”, but I have never doubted its importance for thecommunity I envision.

As I write, Lu Xun’s plea reverberates within me: “Save the children”.We must do so because it’s the only way to save ourselves, and because inthe end, they are why we’re here. CIS was founded for its students and thefuture they will inhabit—that we must etch into our individual and collectiveconsciousnesses. Bloom, half hundred flowers, so thousands more may findtheir voices, now and always. I bid you farewell, CIS, echoing Percy ByssheShelley: “Let a great assembly be, of the fearless, of the free —

Lucas TseMay 26

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Chinese

Chinese 漢基

Sow Fun DawsonI ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

CIS is very Chinese, in a good way. Our students come from very sup-portive families. They have many opportunities to travel, so they are cos-mopolitan. But the families also instill strong Chinese values—though youhave to first define what Chinese means. I enjoy that the students are veryrespectful, maybe because I’m helping them with their university applica-tions. They are polite and modest, though there are always a few who arevery quirky—but that’s acceptable, because they are so young. They arevery Chinese in a positive way, and this actually influences the so-callednon-Chinese qualities. I enjoy, working here at CIS, the close-knit commu-nity where everyone helps each other. We’re Chinese in our values. Workhard, be respectful—those are good and influential values. I don’t read andwrite Chinese, and in some ways I feel lacking. Our students need to main-tain their Chinese. Somehow in the university application process, Chineseis put aside. Students focus more on the other subjects. But again, it varies,and I’ve seen students do the bilingual diploma and work hard to maintaindual-language. It’s something very unique to CIS—the mix of the West andthe East. It’s a good balance.

Again with an ambiguous definition, in your experience, has CISgotten more or less Chinese over the years?

I tend to look at it in terms of my role here. I have to look at the datato think about attitudes. Though I don’t have the figures, I think thereare more students now doing the bilingual diploma. That’s good— youhave self-pride, you’ve been studying Chinese for so long. On occasion, yousee struggles between students and parents about doing second language inB Standard. The school is putting resources for teachers like us to learnChinese. I really appreciate it. It’s not easy —especially the writing, whichis very difficult. With CIS moving forward, the school is helping us. Thereare now fifty teachers and support staff taking Chinese in Putonghua. Wehave no excuse not to learn Chinese. This sends a positive message thatwe’re very Chinese. It’s good that the school is providing resources for usto learn.

How has CIS changed since you arrived, and how would you likeit to change in the future?

I came in 1998. The students and parents here are very serious in theirapplication process. I don’t see a change there. Parents are now muchmore involved in the process. My own daughter, when I asked about school,would be like “it’s okay, mom”. There’s no communication. Parents now

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Chinese 漢基

know more about universities and do research. They will now call us andemail us—I like that, so that everyone’s on the same page. Communicationis key. If I generalize, boys tend not to say anything to their parents. Isee that it’s quite frustrating. I’m working much more with parents, and Ienjoy it. Sometimes they ask challenging questions and I have to be mindfulabout confidentiality. There are certain things that the student will sharewith me, which I don’t think I should share. But in general, parents needto know some information. More and more parents are proactive—to me,it’s positive. I’m a mom!

For the past two years, Mr Mansueto and I have been very busy. Theschool leadership realized that and we will have an additional counsellor.We need to let the school leadership know our needs so they can betterrespond in terms of providing a better service to the students. Parents arevery supportive, so it’s about letting the decision-making people know thatwe need another full-time counsellor. I can’t ask for more—we have beengiven opportunities to go on training and conferences. How could we changefor the better? We need to respond to and supportive of the students. Weneed to be mindful that we’re working with young people. We need to listenmore to what the Year 12s and 13s want. We need to nurture them in theuniversity application process, but we cannot do the job for them. If wehold their hands too much, they might not have that kind of support atuniversity. I’d like to see that the students themselves take more initiativeand do a lot more research on what they want, rather than on one level bepractical and just go for vocational courses—this is very Chinese. It mightnot be right for them at the time. A typical example is law and medicine.Students really need to think seriously. Those courses are very demandingand might not be at that point of time be the right decision.

Sow Fun is a University Counsellor, and has been at CIS since 1998.

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Ted Faunce 方How Chinese do you think CIS is?

We could probably spend the whole fifteen minutes talking about that. Ithink Chinese International School certainly has a Chinese face to the world,so for friends and colleagues who look at our websites and school, who comefrom the West or outside the Chinese culture, CIS is Chinese. Certainlywith our dual language mission, especially in the primary school, I thinkwe linguistically, and to a certain extent culturally, embody Chinese-ness,which could mean a lot of different things; more than other internationalschools, where there is an honest attempt to teach Chinese as a “foreignlanguage”. One of my first impressions, when I first came to CIS six yearsago, was that in some aspects, CIS was an English school with a strongChinese influence. I think that certainly the administration and the teachingstaff are somewhat separated—you have the Chinese Department and theWestern administration.

That Chinese is meaningfully embedded in CIS as a daily experience issomething that is quite inspiring, and I think we’ve gone to that direction.In the primary school, there are more daily announcements that are madein Chinese. I don’t think Chinese should be a ceremonial language—thathappens in Chinese New Year assembly—and not part of school life, andfrankly I would rather have the children not understand the language andnot do what they’re supposed to do, but to have the deep meaning thatChinese counts—not that “when it matters we’ll say it in English” and thatChinese is of a secondary importance. I’m very pleased with the integrationof languages that we have instilled. English is still the language in theplaygrounds, but there is quite a high level of integration of Chinese inclassrooms. The structure of the curriculum in the Secondary school allowsChinese to be the most important, equal to English. Chinese is a rathergeneric name and it can mean a lot of different things. Is it ethnicity,language, et cetera?

In your experience, do you think that CIS has gotten more or lessChinese?

Not for me to judge, but there have been objective standards to say thatit has gotten more Chinese. We have been using The HSK testing recentlyto get an external measure of proficiency. It’s a very healthy thing to havean external benchmark, and to lull a level for a meaningful measure for CISstudents.

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Chinese 漢基

Do you think the further integration of Chinese culture is neededor beneficial to the school environment?

The goal of the CIS Mission is to have equal proficiency in English andChinese for all students. Yes, I do think that finding ways to inspire stu-dents to aspire to higher levels and understanding of Chinese culture is veryimportant. We have not reached this goal yet—not until we have studentswho love Chinese and aspire to major in Chinese in university, seeing thisas vitally important to their lives in ways beyond the fact that their parentstell them it is important. I don’t foresee a day in which students in CISwill be equally proficient in both languages in the near future. However, theChinese Department is definitely making progress.

How have you seen CIS progress? Future directions?

This very project would not have happened five or six years ago. One ofmy first observations at CIS are that students are delightful, polite, hard-working, respectful. Sometimes, in my perspective, they were a bit toodocile. I think this is no longer the case, and that’s a good thing. With crit-ical thinking and independent learning, teenagers should have a little edgeto them. My hope of course is that it can continue to be done with a deepand spontaneous love for the school and their friends and the teachers. Asthe saying goes, students should strive to “find the critical balance betweennot being complacent without it tipping over into fundamental negativity”.This year, the Student Council has rewritten the Constitution, wanting toplay more than just a perfunctory role in the direction of the school.

Ted has been at CIS since 2006 and has been too engrossed in CIS life to seethe time pass. He cannot imagine more interesting and meaningful work thatthe leadership of CIS. His favorite times at CIS are talking with the students,including drop ins to his office, and casual conversations with staff. A goodday is measured by inability to attend to emails.

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Bin Li我們學校的名字叫漢基國際學校，那您認為在我們日常的運作和生活中，漢基所謂的 “漢” 的成分佔多大呢？

我這個字來化來，為我們學校裡的幾個字裡有，“漢基” “國際”，我們是有中文的，是國際在學校的學

(School’s Mission) 中，是地來我們要的是有的學生，所以在我們和目的，中文

放在了重要的位比學的，我們從學到年以是分之這樣的比中文不是學這個，同更重要的是學

的作為一個一個工來學那麼，現在這學，這作學, Collaborative Teaching, 面，更

多地學生有這樣的和來和中文到了中學之后，我們的中學生可覺中文成了國際文的個裡的一個學，相對來比佔得少一是學校在中學和校裡，個中國文化和的大，比了裡面這個的之外，我們還

有 China Experience Program，體中國目，你們可大一的，那還沒有，年是年來年的學生國，個期的，那們來，中文來學，不是，還有學文化還有學一地的的后，們到地的體文化，體的生活，一，是和地的一所學校作的那麼，我們學校的學生和個學校的學生有多的交流們一文的，體的比，所以有多層的的的溝通所以，你是以多少比來呢，那來，是學校的是中文放在一個重要的地位

您在漢基的幾年中，您觀察后認為中國文化在我們的日常運作中，中文被放在了一個越來越重要的地位了嗎？

我在漢基年是年了, 我自的觀察是中文來重要，這幾年了一比較體的法，來現我們來的一法來我們有

一文化的，現在了所的體中國目這樣體的法，來你們應該的 Activities Week，現在更中國文化，更學生體中國地文化，中文所以我覺得是體現得越來越多了，我同學們有這樣的體從的來呢，這幾年，我了多的改比現在到年的的不是 MYP 的 A B 我們變成一個來的 A B 的，為學生在的，一的，還要學，不是一變成 A 的文學的那麼， B 的學生，從被標，是 B 的學生，所以現在我們們 Mainstream，后裡面有不一樣的，在這個流裡同樣的目，學的，有相同的目，有不同的層的所以通這樣的方法學生可以更加活地可以可以，是同樣的一標，不以的 A 和 B

所以通這樣的一體的法，學生更多學中文的更

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Chinese 漢基

有的學，更多的中國的文化和另外，在學校的外活中一樣，我們有自的，是有

的，老師學生，這方面學生化地有學我常常到學生們，我們學中文學的多，的少為在漢基，了中文的之外，常常文，學校之后，在地的

裡，話文，所以通話的比較少所以我們的和目的是要為學生更多的，學生更多地比在學的

Morning Line-up，有學生中文，有學生 Assembly 到中文中學有一的 Assembly，在個校的 Assembly 裡面，有個是中文的，不是中文的，是和中國文化相的

自 2007 年校長

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Anney Ku LayI ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

First let me shed some light on my personal background (which affectsmy point of view). I am Chinese and have been a CIS parent for 15 years.I grew up first going to a Chinese primary school in Taiwan, and then stud-ied at American schools in Jeddah, Taipei, finally I attended university inthe U.S.. Throughout my education, I consistently studied classic Chineseliteratures, Confucianism, Four Books (si shu), Tang poetry, Song poetry,Lao Zi, etc. along the way. So, CIS, to me, is a wonderful internationalschool with emphasis in learning Mandarin Chinese. The entire curricu-lum is divided and taught in either English or Chinese. All subjects aretaught in English, including: Math, Sciences, Humanities, Arts, ComputerTechnology (Secondary), Design Technology (Secondary), P.E., etc. Man-darin Chinese is only spoken and taught in the Chinese subject classes. Theschool is located in Hong Kong, not a Mandarin but Cantonese speakingcity. CIS students come from many different countries, ethnic and languagebackgrounds. The children all communicate in English out of their ownchoice and convenience. If the school community expects all the childrento communicate more in Mandarin, then the curriculum must be changedto have the majority of subjects be taught in Mandarin Chinese, and thetime allocated to “Chinese” subjects must also take up a substantial weight.It’s not easy, since this is not a single language school. It is, after all, aninternational school.

I do think the students at CIS have a very good foundation and under-standing of the Mandarin Chinese language. And, it is good that the schooldivides the Chinese language levels throughout 7 years of Secondary School.Should the students ever need to use Mandarin Chinese language in the fu-ture, i.e. working environment, or at a Mandarin speaking environment, Ibelieve they will be able to use what they have learned at CIS and do well.And, they will rise to the occasion.


This is very hard to say, only because I don’t really understand themeaning of “more Chinese” or “less Chinese”.


CIS is always changing and evolving. I do hope that the children, teach-ers, parents, administration and the entire school community stay close,open-minded, understanding and continue to grow together.

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Do you have anything else to add about CIS, either on this topicor another?

When I think of CIS, I think of all the children, teachers, Mr. Wong’steam, the security guards, the bus mothers, the secretaries, oh yes Portia, theparents, the administrators, etc., and all the wonderful times we all sharedas individuals and collectively as a community in the last 15 years. I thinkof the whole school musicals, school plays, the school fairs, sports days, howwe went to Crossroads to paint the apartments of the live-in volunteers, howwe yelled our lungs out year after year at the garage sales, and burnt ourhands making sweet popcorn at the school fair. I think of the weeks beforeeach school trip, how all of us parents would earnestly discuss where to find-20 degrees celsius sleeping bags or water shoes behind our children’s backs.I think of how we missed the school, when we were all “evacuated” and theschool was shut down during SARS. I think of the many late nights I stayedup writing to different teachers, working closely with each of them, hopingthat they would understand a child of artistic talent and focus studying ina naturally competitive and academic environment. And, how closely theyworked with me. I think of all the times different teachers gave to each ofmy children chances to excel, improve, take on leadership roles, rooms tomake mistakes, stand on the center of the stage and perform, and how happyand satisfied they have been watching their students and my children grow.I also think of how the parents held each others hands, while we sharedour worries, concerns, tears, laughters, joys and excitements secretly behindour children’s backs. I think of all the stress we shared, yes the IB exams,college application deadlines, just to name a few. And, how we developedlifelong friendships in CIS because of our children. Since we are not fromHong Kong, CIS has been our family’s sole “community” in this city. AllI can think of are how much we as a family has learned, grew, gained andexpanded ourselves in this “community”. Now that my second and youngestchild has just graduated from CIS and we will not be going back to CIS, Iwould like to thank the CIS community for everything it has given to ourfamily! Words simply cannot express our love and gratitude.

Anney is a CIS parent.

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Victor Loong ’10I ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

On the surface, CIS tries to be as Chinese as an international schoolin Hong Kong can be. The majority of the student population is Chinese.We celebrate traditional Chinese festivals and holidays. CIS emphasizesmore on Chinese education than other international schools in Hong Kong.Furthermore, the Chinese virtues and values of are verymuch expressed in many CIS students.

However, is CIS really that “Chinese” at its very core? From my own CISexperience, all classes except Chinese class were taught in English. Duringrecess and lunch times, my friends and I communicated in either English orCantonese, which is not Chinese if one defines Chinese as Mandarin. Thoughwe were aware of major news and events occurring in Hong Kong and China,our perspectives on Hong Kong and China were very much based upon ourannual project week trips, geography fieldwork and weekend adventures toLan Kwai Fong and Times Square. Most of us live on Hong Kong Island,rarely visiting Kowloon and other parts of Hong Kong, where true Chineseculture is more apparent.

Can we really say that we are Chinese through and through, or even“Hong-Kong-nese”, for that matter? CIS students live in a bubble on Brae-mar Hill, a bubble shaped by the ideas of the West and lifestyles of the finan-cially privileged. We do not know about the struggles that local studentsgo through under the Hong Kong educational system, nor that Mainlandhealthcare services are heavily corrupt. We bathe in the glory of China’seconomic successes, yet we are quick to criticize its darker sides, as if wewere outsiders.

How many CIS graduates would choose to stay in Hong Kong or Chinafor their tertiary education? Few, I presume. They refer Hong Kong astheir “home”, but this “home” is perceived from a Westerner’s point ofview—financially prosperous, freedoms, international, Causeway Bay. Thisis a “home” in which they can reside to when things get tough outside, butit is not a “home” they are willing to help improve.

I don’t blame CIS students though: we have been brought up this way.Both “Chinese” and “International” are emphasized, but “International”obviously carries a greater weight. But being “International” creates adilemma: we don’t belong to the west, yet we don’t seem to fit into theChinese culture either; we belong neither here nor there, but are ratherstuck in between. We are “bananas”; our skin is Chinese but our innardsare Western.

So, just how Chinese is CIS, really? From my experience: not quite.

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In my past seven years at CIS, the school has stayed rather constant inthe level of “Chinese-ness”—neither more nor less.


Other than the construction of the Language and Arts building, no othermajor changes took place during my time in CIS. I do like the fact that com-pared to Dr Blumenthal, Dr Faunce has interacted more with the studentbody—his weekly letters are certainly longer in length. Communicationwithin the community should always be encouraged.

Student council members and senior students should do more. I know Iam being unfair, comparing university students with high school students,but seriously, the CIS student council can make more impact. The most Isee of them is during the annual September election. After that, they seemto completely vanish!

Going back to the point on “being Chinese”, I think that CIS can incor-porate more Chinese cultural factors into students’ extra-curricular activi-ties.

Victor graduated from CIS in 2010, and now studies at the University ofHong Kong.

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Alina Luk ’12How Chinese do you think CIS is?

To be completely honest, CIS is not that Chinese. The majority of thestudents take Chinese as a second language, and I don’t think they can speakit as fluently as people would expect students at a Chinese InternationalSchool. The styles and fashion that we’re into are not very Chinese at all,and are very different from local Chinese styles. Our school in general isvery Western.

In your experience, has CIS gotten more or less Chinese?

That’d be hard to say, although I’ve been in CIS for 14 years. I don’tknow how people were in Year 13 when I was in Reception. But havingbeen in secondary, according to the people I’ve been exposed to, it doesn’tseem like people are very Chinese. A lot of students are not particularlyproud about being Chinese and I think that’s something we should try tocultivate. A lot of people wouldn’t really care about Chinese studies andspeaking Chinese fluently, although they are ethnically Chinese. I do thinkthat’s something CIS is trying to adjust but culture is hard to change in aday. A lot more attempts, the CCC, for example, are trying to cultivate andbring out the pride in being Chinese and the love for learning Chinese, butI don’t think we’ve quite reached that yet.

Do you think it’s something that’s extremely important? If youhad the resources and the power, what would you do?

It’s extremely important especially because we call ourselves the ChineseInternational School. I do hope that every student would have the love oflearning both Chinese and English. If I had the resources and effort, Iwouldn’t know how to do it, because trying to generate a sense of pride inyour nationality and your ethnicity is a hard thing to do. But I think theCCC is a great opportunity. For example, if I had a chance to go abroad fora year in China to study there and continue my studies, I would definitelytake it. To have the exposure to the students outside of CIS at a localChinese school—I think that would be really helpful, opening our eyes to adifferent school culture and different people.

This book we’re publishing is putting emphasis on public discourseand honest dialogue. Do you think these are important ideals thatCIS should strive for and how well do you think CIS is fulfillingthem? How do you think we can work towards them?

CIS is halfway there. When students have their own opinions, they areallowed to voice them and we are given the resources and opportunities to do

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so. Students can start groups and campaign for them, gaining the school’sattention through different means. But it’s not part of the culture in CIS.Students who are very gung-ho, out there, will do it, but it’s not generallyencouraged for students to speak up. There are students who are reallypassionate and believe in what they’re doing that, but most of the studentsare more passive—who would rather sit back than stand up and voice theiropinions. We should strive towards that because it’s very important foreveryone to figure out what they believe in and what their opinions are.But I also understand that high school especially is a time for people tofigure out who they are, and a lot of people might not be uncomfortablegetting out there and putting out their opinions when they really are justtrying to figure it out. So I think CIS is a balance between the two and I dothink that public discourse, honesty and open dialogue is important—butthen again, I think that our school should allow students who want to speakup to speak, but not push the students who are still figuring things out.

How well do you think our school actively seeks the opinions ofstudents or the faculty?

I can’t think of too many instances, but the one instance in which Ithink students should have been able to voice their opinion was the bag rule.The rule solely affected the students, but they were never ever once askedwhat they thought. I don’t think it ended up turning very well either—ininstances like that, it’s really important to consult the students, and alsoparents, because I know that several parents had issues and concerns withthat.

Do you think that’s a result of students not having a formalizedrole in the decision making process?

Yes, for issues like that primarily concern students, students should def-initely have a form or means of speaking up. That was an instance wherethe rule should not have been just imposed with no questions and opinionsasked. At the same time, with the ways the rule has been relaxed and theway that things have changed, I don’t think the bag rule still exists and isimposed on students anymore. This is perhaps an example of students notbeing consulted—but after the rule was imposed, students spoke up, andbecause of those students, it’s no longer a rule.

Alina has studied at CIS since 1998, and will soon be attending StanfordUniversity.

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Sha Luo漢基有多 “漢”?

我覺得學校可以一個文化的，中國的文化沒有佔到一為我現在是 language B，所以們的是外國的，方的，沒有中國人的體來，為學校是一個國際學校，所以是比較方化的

漢基和你的預期有甚麼分別？

我來之， CIS 是一個好的學校後來到了，覺到的國際學校比，我們的中文是的，有中國文化的的學生多一是覺到多學生有中國文化，不是了解中國文

化是甚麼，面的，中國的日中國文化的不是這我們有一學生的中文好，為們不，別是，，所以們要地了解中國文化，還

是有一的一個人應一文化，另一個文化，自對那個文化的法

漢基在未來應該怎樣改進？

我覺得我們要更和文化，我們要面對一個現學生的是有的現在學校所的中國文化是的，我覺得現在話

的流是文化的一分，我們不現中國文化

互相溝通，互相對話，漢基怎樣可以加強學生和老師們的交流？

從一個際的來看，是同學生的學，老師的工作，為大一樣我們可以一，進一和互是，之有，後地到大中文老師可以法老師，同學們可以

中文老師這樣，老師可以 curriculum 更好，同學們可以了解們學甚麼理可以看到學生們和老師的交流怎樣多一人，有多一的交流，一得

自 2011 年中文學理, 年中文老師

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Andrew MummI ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

At first glance, CIS looks very Chinese—we’re located in Hong Kong, wehave a well-established Chinese department, many official school documentsare presented in both English and Chinese versions, we have China programs,our student body is very homogeneous and Asian-looking, the majority ofour families come from Chinese backgrounds. CIS is definitely more Chinesethan other international schools. It’s becoming even more Chinese, which isgreat because we are after all the Chinese International School.

But at some basic level, we are still really not that Chinese. I can give youan example. During my Year 10 math class the other day, we were talkingabout ，，，， —these powers of ten in Chinese. It seemed to methat very few students were aware of the fact that is a commonly usedunit in China. Only around four out of forty students seemed to really knowthat. To me, that shows a lack of understanding of Chinese culture. Maybesome of our students need to connect the dots in what they’re learning.

It’s not only the students. Some members of staff are not shy to show acertain lack of respect for China—mainland China, in many ways. My wifeis from mainland China. On a number of occasions, I’ve almost felt offendedby some of the things colleagues and students can say about mainland China.We’re still insensitive to mainland China. Personally, I’d like CIS to becomemore diverse and respectful towards all cultures. I’d like to see it becomea unique global school where all members of our community have this deepunderstanding and appreciation of Chinese and international values—notjust Hong-Kong-Taiwanese or British-Australian-expatriate values.


This is only my third year here, so I have limited experience in answeringthat question properly. It seems, though, that CIS is definitely improvingits Chinese profile. It has been a priority to do that—I think that’s good.


I do feel a lot of change has happened and is happening. But thosechanges—are they because CIS has changed, or because I have changed, orbecause the rest of the world has changed? All these things are changing atthe same time. It’s hard to control these variables and look for meaningfulcorrelations there.

When it comes to education, I’d like the secondary school to put muchless emphasis on grades and standardized assessments. It should instead

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focus on inspiring creativity, innovation and true love for learning. I’d liketo see CIS go forward in implementing a new paradigm of education. Youhave a lot of professors of education, like Yong Zhao and Ken Robinson,who have all these brilliant ideas about how you can make the educationalexperience so much better.

I feel like we still live in the 19th or 20th century—education has thisindustrial approach. It frustrates me at times, to see that so many schoolsare so conservative and that it takes such a long time to change things.You see very little change in one school year. Educators and administratorsdon’t like changing during the school year—whereas in companies, maybeyou could make changes at any given time. It’s hard to do that in school.

When we have the summer holidays at school, teachers kind of log offand don’t really think about it. They come back and just start doing thesame thing over again. We haven’t really had a chance to change anything,and that frustrates me.

This book is an effort to emphasize the importance of public di-alogue and honest discourse. Are these ideals CIS needs to aimfor? And if they are, how can CIS work towards them?

Of course these are great ideals that we all need to aim for. I’m a bigfan of open, transparent and truthful communication, even though the truthhurts sometimes. As a first step to improvement, we need to acknowledgewhat’s not working and change that. Newton is known to have said that“truth is my best friend”, which I interpret as that truth never really lets youdown. Always bet on the truth, and that will take you the furthest. Who canargue against some rational, well thought through and truthful reasoning?It’s very hard to disagree. We need much more of that in general and inthe world, not just at CIS. People need to be more transparent and truthfulabout many things.

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Do you have anything to add about CIS, either on this topic oranother?

I really love working here, of course. There are ups and downs, as therealways are. I’d say that 95% of all my students are really amazing youngpeople who inspire me and who keep me going. That’s really what countsthe most as a teacher—the students, who I deal with on an everyday basis.I really think we have some of the world’s best students at CIS. We needto appreciate that more as teachers and administrators. We need to listenmore to the students.

Andrew has been a mathematics teacher at CIS since 2009. He is Danish,n+ 11 years old, and loves living in Hong Kong with his Chinese wife.

1n is the least positive integer for which n!(n+1)!(2n+1)!−1 ends in thirty digits thatare all 9’s.

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Konberg Ngai 國成

漢基有多 “漢”？

在 1983 年，有位了漢基的，漢基的文化要是文的後來地，在一年，們改變了多，學生們漢那漢

基 “漢” 的成有多少，我覺得這在中一，好 “” 這變化了好幾，覺得應該中國別的日，覺得

這加了一中國的文化後來覺得不，所以加了法，中國和地理 1988 年的，我們一個了一個中國名，是為少，所以們叫一分，，我們的外國同還是覺得比較好後來，一個有一個中文名，是地增加中國的成我覺得還未，要是不地增加，我

在我們的日常生活和學校裡面，我們有沒有體現對中國文化的理解？

在學校裡面，我覺得應該在方面看在一方面，中國文化不地增加，在另一個方面，的目是文來，所以所謂，還是文學校裡面的中國文化不，我覺得是不為一個，

文，的多，被，學生們基在文，少中文所以們多方的文化，中國文化還不

作為一個中文老師，自從你來了漢基之後，學生對中國文化的熱愛和對中文的掌握是增長了還是減少了？

中文的是常的，有這一年好一，那一年一，生一樣在漢基裡面，中文的成是增加的，這是的我覺得是不的

國成自 1987 年中文老師，年漢基

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Johnson Pak ’14I ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

As a bilingual school, CIS is pretty balanced because it is compulsoryfor everyone to learn Chinese as well as English. In regards to the Chineselevel at CIS, you can’t really say it’s bad or good in essence. But theChinese level can certainly be improved, because many people, especiallyWesterners, are inclined to speak English rather than Chinese at school intheir free time. Therefore, with the upcoming Chinese Center, I think thiswould be a very good opportunity for students to practice their Chineseskills and learn about the Chinese culture. And hopefully with that newinterest in Chinese culture, they would be more inclined to speak Chinese.

Has CIS gotten more or less Chinese over the years?

The China center will definitely make the CIS community more “Chi-nese”, but we can’t really classify because CIS is supposed to be put every-one in the same community so that we learn from each other. Instead ofsaying that CIS is becoming more Chinese, we are actually learning fromeach other, and respecting each other’s perspectives and backgrounds. I re-ally don’t think classifying them as more or less Chinese will help the CIScommunity to improve.

Do you think it should be a priority for the school to furtherimmerse the students into the Chinese culture?

We could do more in integrating the CIS community into the Chineseand Hong Kong background, but in my opinion, it is pretty good right now.For example, in the school curriculum, we are learning about Hong Kong inHistory and Geography class, so we are actually learning more about HongKong and where we are right now. Also, we learn to appreciate Hong Kong’sbackground and culture.

Do you think public discourse is an aim that CIS should strivefor? How?

This book has a very good purpose and aims for honesty between stu-dents, teachers and leading people in the school. We could have more di-alogue between students and teachers to really tell the teachers about thestudents’ concern and vice versa, such as academics and other stuff. Therehas to be a mutual respect between these two groups.

Johnson is a Year 11 student at CIS.

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Ken PembertonHow Chinese is CIS?

Is it really true that we get the government we deserve—if so, perhaps wein Hong Kong did something pretty awful in our previous lives. Perhaps thequotation, oft attributed to de Tocqueville, has more to do with exercisingdemocratic rights than karma. I have, throughout the last 30 years, or so,pondered (usually in the early hours of the morning), whether it is wise tohave the best police force money can buy (a joke), but more importantly,whether parents, children and teachers actually get the school they deserve.

I suppose the answer to the last question is, ’it depends upon who you areasking’. The reason I come to that conclusion is that over the last decade anda half that I have been a parent at CIS, during most of which I was a memberof the General Committee of the PTA, a question that has frequently arisenin one guise or another is, ’How Chinese is CIS?’ The question is usuallyfollowed by heated debate on such matters as the pros and cons of simplifiedversus traditional, wrote versus absorption, tiger mom versus pussy cat,literary analysis versus Oriental Daily (another joke), tutors versus go-it-alone, IB scores, and Ivy League versus Green Mountain College.

The school undertook the Strategic Planning process in 2008 that re-sulted in the CIS Strategic Vision that focused on five areas, one of which wasChinese language and culture, and made the following recommendations:develop proposals for an immersion centre in the PRC; develop Chinese asa medium of instruction in a wider range of subjects; encourage the CIScommunity to explore new ways to teach, use and enjoy Chinese within andbeyond the school; encourage appreciation and understanding of the Chi-nese culture; reinforce our commitment to dual-language and dual-cultureeducation; and devise a short clear motto in both Chinese and English. TheCIS China Centre (CCC) will welcome CIS students in another year or so.Without wanting to sound like a cynic (which I am not), I suppose it wouldcome as no surprise to acknowledge that there is considerable debate withinthe CIS community concerning the pros and cons of the CCC, even the wis-dom of its very conception (I am a supporter). How ironic, perhaps, whenone considers what a massive step and, perhaps, improving standards ofChinese for our students.

The school perseveres to forge its way in an increasingly competitive en-vironment, in which all international schools in Hong Kong now offer Chineselanguage education in a far more meaningful manner than was the case eventen years ago. CIS continues to attract huge waiting lists, so it must be do-ing something right. I would suppose that high on the list of many existingor prospective parents when they considered CIS for their children wouldhave been the dual language education. This really was one of the most dis-tinguishing features of the school, although its well-established MYP and IB

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Diploma programs, fabulous students, and attractive plant would also ratehigh, alongside the ever-improving university acceptances for its graduates.I could go on. If you are still not convinced, look up Chinese InternationalSchool in Singapore. Their public page boasts, ’Variety of Sports’, ’Musicand Art Studios’ and ’…Campus-wide Internet Access.’ Wowee!

Some CIS parents can be a pretty demanding bunch. Set aside fromthe usually silent and satisfied majority, and silent but dissatisfied, thereare groups of vocal and ’pushy’ parents, used to getting what they want,and unbridled in their ability to trample over the emotions of professionaleducators. They would not be satisfied with the level of intellectual curiositydemonstrated by statesman Charles de Gaulle (President of a country withmore than 246 types of cheese) when he uttered those words of wisdom,’China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese’. Quite right too, butthe school operates within certain constraints. Take the IB for instance.There are constraints in what can be taught—because there is a curriculumset by the IBO, and CIS teachers, bless them would, no doubt, dearly loveto teach other aspects of Chinese but cannot do so because they simply donot have the time to do that and to get through the syllabus (how couldthey with long holidays to contend with, preceded by obligatory ’half’ days,professional development, school closures due to typhoons, SARS, and thelike). So it’s tough if your child gets the dual language diploma and is wellable to recite memorized lines that would impress in a discussion concerningliterary commentary, but not be able to read the Oriental Daily. It mightstick in your throat that the best Chinese language students at CIS were notsuckled from Reception—they norm. Perhaps they came to CIS to brushup on their English.

Outraged parents would do well to consider IB examinations are in En-glish, not Chinese (except one I can think of). CIS is an ’international’school—it must be because it says it is. Interestingly, when researching whatan ’international school’ actually is, I read an article by Cynthia Nagrathwho concluded that amongst the requirements is an English or bi-lingualeducation. It is a fact that at CIS the primary language is English—this isby design.

I want to hark back to the Strategic Planning process and the StrategicVision because they really were a watershed in the development of the school.You would have noted that one of the recommendations was to ’encouragethe CIS community to explore new ways to teach, use and enjoy Chinesewithin and beyond the school’. This is the key to the answer to, ’How Chineseis CIS’. It’s really up to you. What role have you played in exploring newways to teach, use and enjoy Chinese within and beyond the school? Whospeaks in the playgrounds and sports field—the students—they often choseEnglish or Cantonese, their choice. Galileo Galilei said, ’You cannot teacha man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.’ If youwant CIS to be more Chinese then do something about it.

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Compare CIS today to where it was 10 or 15 years ago—we’re a lot moreChinese than we used to be—but are we Chinese enough? Be grateful forthe effort that is being made, be grateful that your child is at Hong Kong’sbest school. Get onboard and contribute in a constructive manner. Get theschool you deserve!

Ken is a CIS parent.

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Sylvia RoldánAs a foreign language teacher here at CIS, how Chinese do youthink CIS is?

I think culturally there’s an aim to try and highlight Chinese culture, Ithink the mere fact that a majority of the students are in some way, shape orform connected to Chinese culture can only bring out any type of Chinese-ness, if you will. However, I do think that the academic language of theschool is English, at least in secondary school. Now, I do hear the studentssometimes speak to one another in Cantonese, which I think often timesis ignored at this school. So, I guess I would have to ask, what do youmean by Chinese? That should be my first question. Do students listen toChinese music on their own? Is it something we’re trying to promote? Ithink, within that the setting that we’re in, I’d probably say the school isvery Chinese, compared to other schools where Chinese doesn’t exist, I’d saythat it’s relatively Chinese, but the fact of the matter remains that Englishprevails. Very rarely, am I in a situation of, “oh I don’t understand becauseeverything is being done in Chinese,” even with my level of Putonghua, theburden of bilingualism is always on the Chinese native.

Now that we have various efforts to integrate ourselves furtherinto Chinese culture and Chinese society such as the CCC, do youthink we’ve progressed to becoming more or less Chinese, or moreor less the same, and do you think it will continue to grow andchange?

I think that, honestly, only good can come when you try to immerseyourself in a language and a culture. In this case, the Chinese we’re tryingto promote is Putonghua and not Guangdonghua (Cantonese), then going toa place such as Mainland China, where Putonghua is the daily language, canonly serve to benefit. What I think we often don’t really count on or discussis, what happens to students once they leave Hong Kong? I think for anyonewhen they leave their home, it’s when they start realizing how much this orthat they are. So once students go to university, I think that’s when a lotstudents understand “oh wow, Hong Kong living has played this formidablepart of my living, and Chinese values and culture and being at CIS hasshaped a lot of who I am.” I always tell people, yes it’s an internationalschool, but I feel like I teach at a community school. I happen to be withstudents whose families have had 2, 3, 4, 5 kids go through this school and soin that sense it is a community school that does embrace and embody, at thevery least two cultures. More and more, I think we’re bringing more cultures,obviously with the option of studying French and Spanish in Y7, and thedifference service trips during project week that are other possibilities forfurther cultural engagement. I think we are also in a position, as a leading

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school, to help others say, within the Chinese diaspora. I think we focus a loton going to the mainland, but what is it that we have at the school that wecan provide to others who may not have access to that. So, whether that’sworking with Chinese Americans, or Chinese Brits, whose families who dosend them to Chinese schools on Saturdays. I’ve been to Thailand and I seethat there are Chinese schools there and Chinese medium of instruction. Sowhat are we doing to engage that? Which, I think really speaks to a lot ofwhat we do in project week anyways. I think, the main thing is to really dosomething that is meaningful, real, and that people are invested in, so thatit’s not just something else that we tick off a box, and say we are Chinesebecause, we have Chinese language, we have a centre in China, we’re notticking boxes here. If we were to survey the students, “do you feel Chinese,what makes you Chinese?”- I think, historically, there’s been a sense of, wellthere are these values and traditions and if I don’t fit into that I must notbe Chinese. For so many of our students who are ethnically mixed or havebeen in foreign countries and have come back because their families havemoved back or what not, then we really need to start examining what thatis, and CIS is in a position to do that. So many people here feel comfortablebecause they’re mixed and can be themselves, can be Chinese, can be non-Chinese, really whoever they want, when they may not feel accepted in othersocieties, whether it’s here in Hong Kong or when they study abroad whenpeople don’t understand why they speak English when having a “Chineseface.”

Señorita Roldán first joined CIS in 2006, as the founding Spanish teacher.Since then she has also taught ToK. Currently, she is also the proud Home-room Teacher of 10GL in Purple House. Señorita Roldán, a native LosAngeleno, is a dance enthusiast and linguist who embraces multiculturalism& plurilingualism.

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Chinese 漢基

Amy Tai ’12I ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

I think there are two types of people in CIS. One type is the local type,because most of them either come from local schools, or they just comefrom really Hong Kong families—their parents don’t speak English, theyjust speak Cantonese. They are more Hong Kong in general, they are moreaware of what’s happening in Hong Kong and you can tell that when theyhang out, they speak Canto, and when they walk on the street, they justlook like any other Hong Kong people. The second type either come froma foreign place, or their parents talk to them in English at home. Also, ingeneral, CIS people are kind of wealthy, so when they hang out, they goto high class places where they can speak English, so they don’t really feelthe need to learn Cantonese or they don’t feel the need to blend into HongKong society.

What do you think about the various efforts that the school hasput in to try and integrate us into Chinese society, with the CCCand things like that? Do you think that’s going to improve howwe’re sort of divorced from Hong Kong society or Chinese culture?

To clarify first, I think there is a difference between Hong Kong andChinese culture. I think CIS is trying to make its students assimilate into theChinese culture rather than the Hong Kong one. In terms of internationalschools, I think CIS is actually really Chinese, in a sense that all studentslearn Chinese, to a pretty good level compared to other international schools.We also often have school trips to the Mainland especially in the lower yearsand I think that’s good. I myself went to Hunan Project Week trip to servethe students, who are 工 . But at the same time, we were stayingin a five-star hotel and the meals were pretty good in general. I guess, toassimilate into their culture, doesn’t mean just going to their school, for onehour or two, just looking into it, but also trying to live with them. But Iunderstand how it can be impractical to live with them in like half-brokenrooms, and parents would complain.

Amy has been at CIS since 2009, and has yet to decide on what she will bedoing or where she will be going this fall.

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Chinese 漢基

Tom Winderam 文

I ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

Officially, of course, it’s dual languge and dual culture—that’s what itsays in the mission. In terms of language, probably in the primary schoolcomes close to that, but in the secondary school Chinese becomes a taughtsubject along with all the other MYP and DP subjects. It loses quiet a lotof the Chinese-ness in the secondary curriculum.

In ethos, it would like to be more Chinese. There’s always a problemwith external examinations and universities. I’m not convinced that it’s asdual language as it thinks it is. Over the years that I’ve been here, this hasalways been an issue, and I don’t think they’ve ever resolved that issue.


It’s trying to be more Chinese. The willingness is there to be moreChinese. But I don’t think we’ve really ever, as a community, got to gripsas to what that means. What does it mean to be more Chinese? I don’tthink we’ve ever worked out an answer to that. Putting Chinese artifactsaround the school, for example, doesn’t necessarily mean that the schoolbecomes Chinese. One example that I think is quite glaring is that we haveall of our staff meetings, all of our discussion in English, never in Chinese.The reason for that is fairly obvious: because our Chinese teachers are fairlyOK to speak English, but our English teachers can’t speak Chinese, so wetend to default to speaking English, which is a great pity. There is also acultural aspect to that, because many Chinese people don’t like speaking upin large groups anyway, so we never really hear from our Chinese teachers.

What role can or will the CCC play in CIS becoming more Chi-nese?

That’s a really difficult question. The original concept of the CCC wasthat it would be the culmination of a steadily developing Chinese programthroughout the school, from the primary school, which as we’ve said, isfairly strong there. Using the China Experience program to bolster theuse of Chinese by taking students into China in Chinese setting, gettingthem to appreciate the language and culture, and the CCC would then be aculmination of that before we settle down to the business of getting peopledown to exams. That was the original conception. I think it has sort ofwandered off somehow, and I’m not sure about how that’s actually going towork, but we remain optimistic and hope for the best.

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Chinese 漢基


When we as a family first came to CIS, it was a brand new building andit was a very small school. We had 75 students in the secondary school, wewent up to Year 9, it was a very small school with a very small stuff. We werevery much closer together as a group, parents, teachers, administration, allwere in the same space and we communicated all the time. We’ve graduallyexpanded because of our success and expanded and expanded and over-grown our facilities and still expanded, so things have become much morefragmented, we don’t have the same contact with the students, we don’thave the same contact with the parents, and what’s worse, we don’t havethe same contact with fellow teachers. The staff room isn’t used for thatkind of purpose. It’s incredibly difficult to talk about education and to talkabout students—to get people together. In the last few years, also, we’veheaded off on the pursuit of excellence track, which is right and proper, butthe workload has increased accordingly. People are being asked to thingsthat are not their teaching jobs, which take time without the time beingallocated, so stress levels have increased and the feeling that we’re runningfaster and faster just to stand in the same place—a red queen kind of modelhere—is more and more evident in staff and parents, and I think in studentstoo.

My view over my years of leading departments and working as a deputyprinciple is that we must make progress, but we must make it in a carefuland controlled manner. We need to have periods when we’re not makingprogress, just consolidating, making what you’re trying to do actually hap-pen. Once that’s solidly locked in place, then you can make more progress.If you try to make huge leaps all of a sudden, we just end up in some diffi-culty and there’s just too much pressure. You have to consolidate. You haveto pause for breath and reflect on what you’ve done. See what’s worked andwhat doesn’t worked—get rid of what doesn’t work, revamp that, focus onwhat’s going to happen next and plan the change.

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Chinese 漢基

Do you have anything to add about CIS, either on this topic oranother?

CIS is a fine institution. It’s supported by some very thoughtful people.Most of the staff are very thoughtful, intelligent people who work very hardfor the students. It has places where it’s not very good, and we need tofocus on those. But by large, I think it is a world-class school. But we haveto be mindful of why we do all of this, and how we do all of this, and theprinciple reason why we do all in my mind is for the students. And if welose sight of the students, then we lose sight of the whole purpose. So wehave to make sure whatever initiatives we are having, must be focused onand grounded in the students.

Tom is a Science teacher and Deputy Head of Secondary (Administration),and has been at CIS since 1991.

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Chinese 漢基

K H Wong 國

漢基有多 “漢”?

Chinese，為文和中文佔一文重要，中文重要所以這學校裡多外國學生的中文

你在漢基工作了多久？

我在這了多一年 1991 年

你覺得漢基變得比較多 “漢” 化還是少了？

，我覺得 Chinese 比較多了中文方面，學中文方面，文多可為這幾年，大學生多了

自從你來了漢基後，漢基有甚麼方面的改變呢？

改變大，校大了多，加了，另外了一的中, 加了，

你覺得漢基裡的老師，學生和職員的溝通好不好？

我們是，一個有交，所以對我們來，溝通對沒有，相是中文生還是文生是

對漢基有甚麼另外的看法？？

我們的裡，在這幾年，為多了一個中，所以多了多要這幾年來學校得大，加了多，我們的

多了另外，學校多了多外活，常有的，長，工作我們不要和運和，還要，，所以人比較有多活要我們外，我們要個工到中，，要工作不地增加，人有，這到學校的

國自 1991 年理

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Chinese 漢基

Gongming Yan漢基有多 “漢”?

這個大，為你是看學校的人，那有多的人，看得大不的人是從地來的是你從學校的文化來

，別是中學，不中國化為我們的，中文佔的一分，放學後，學生們要是，我們的和們以後得工作，是方有的我不年後們怎樣，們現在和未來的年，要是怎樣方的，所以們常不多中國的

你在漢基多久？你覺得漢基應該強化中國文化嗎？怎樣可以達到這個目標？

這是我的一年我覺得 “強化”這個不是，為一學校有自的文化，這是自地生的，個學校有自的 mission，比我們叫 “漢基”，我們從 board 到老師，長和學

生，大比較認同和重中國文化可是，我覺得這是我們的 mission，那我們應該 “ ” 學生，那是強和強化，來有 political，學校應該一，更多的學生和老師，別是外國老師，了解中國現在的文化和現在，我覺得對大的看法還是比較，為常常可以到 “I’m going to China”, 作為一個中國人，我，

“ 不是在 China 嗎？” 為大的人覺得是，“China”是 “China”

怎樣改善？

我個人覺得學校應該 MYP 和 DP 是不是成的，是不是學生和老師的，學校的我不是學校得不好，為漢基的成在和是好的，是我們不得更好？我覺得 MYP 和DP 不是學生的要，老師的個方面，我們怎樣可以在常工作的，方和方的老師一作，更多年和有法的老師我們有多有的老師，我未來的，一是要更年和有活的老師，可不是 bilingual，可是 trilingual，們的漢基的我覺得是漢基的 selling point，那我們

的老師應該是學校應該在這方面老師們 PD 為我們的外國老師不中文，們多，不漢基好的法在地現

漢基不同階層的人怎樣可以有更好的溝通？

我覺得重要的是，Student Council 應該一個更大的作學生自是應該理自的工作，要有自的在漢基，我的觀察是，長的是比學生的更大我覺得這不，為學是學生們的，

是老師的，一個學校，應該是學生和老師，長不在中了一個我們應該有越來越的，甚麼是對的，甚麼是

30

Chinese 漢基

的甚麼是可以的，甚麼不可以有這樣，可以的，有理地和我們應該有一個比較善的，學生們理

自，老師們看到學生們有這個

對漢基有甚麼另外的看法？

我覺得 CIS 的學生，大，我大大對進大學有的目標，那現在重要的是要地，好的我相多同學的好，多的地方，是

一個 global citizen 可是你地現自的成，你還是要在學校學好一漢基的名好，同學們不可以為我是漢基的學生，所以我應該，你是一個漢基的學生，你到一個好的，了這個，沒有別的

自 2011 年中文老師

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Chinese 漢基

Abigail Yee ’17I ask this as an open-ended question: how Chinese is CIS, really?

Not very Chinese. We only have like one Chinese class and it’s notcompletely in Chinese. I’m in Brand 2, and class is not taught in Chinese.Most of us come from Western backgrounds, so we’re not really Chinese andfor most of us, our first language is English.


I don’t know. It’s pretty much stayed the same. It’s important for us,though, to become more Chinese. Chinese is a growing language. People arestarting to speak it, even Hong Kong taxi drivers now. We could improvethe situation by having bilingual classes, so teachers don’t only teach inEnglish.

Abigail is a Year 8 student at CIS.

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International

International 國際

David BrianI read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

Let’s first take the aspect first of local and global interaction and citizen-ship. I think the school has done very well on this over the years, certainlyfrom my perspective as a humanities teacher. We’ve been taking studentsabroad, into China, working on social enterprise projects, every year, ProjectWeek’s been going on for a decade. Before that, we were taking studentsabroad on different trips to Sabah, or Bali, to engage globally. Locally,the Green Group, environmental group, has done lots of work. Lots of stu-dents are working in after school activities with different NGOs, like Handin Hand, and those are student initiatives.

One of the things right now, Ms Safaya has now been appointed the localand global coordinator. This was something identified around three yearsago in one of the Strategic Vision committees, which I actually sat on withseveral parents and teachers. They identified the need for someone to bringthis all together. Just like how we have a sports and ASA coordinator, so MsSafaya’s job is to do an inventory of what we’re doing, in both primary andsecondary, and then from there see where we go—how can we engage morewithin our local, regional and global community? Often what happens is,say you have a new teacher who comes into my department here, and they’renew to Hong Kong, they don’t have connections and they don’t know howto get involved with, say, JA or MUN. That’s her position—to help teachersto take forward students in this school.

From that perspective, I think we do very well. I’ve worked at anotherschool that had done half an effort in this particular area. You can alwaysimprove, and make those experiences more in-depth, more meaningful. Andnot just for us. We have to recognize that, when we talk about being awarecitizens, it’s also about how we impact on those communities. Is it beneficialin both ways? Is it symbiotic? Or is it just us getting the experience?Because if that’s the case, I don’t believe in that because that’s just usspending money to cart people, to look at culture rather than experienceand engage with it.

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There is a widespread notion of a “CIS bubble”. Do you thinkthis bubble exists? And if it does, how might it undermine theeducation CIS provides?

I’ve heard it call the “Braemar Hill bubble”. I’m very much aware ofthat, having worked here for many years. This is the challenge for us aseducators. Personally, as a teacher, when I sit down and design curriculum,I’m consciously thinking about how to break down those barriers, how togo from being a bubble into being more engaged with our community. Yougot to take conscious steps in dealing with this. And I agree, if we don’taddress it, it is a handicap for our students, our school. So addressing it isgetting out there and doing things in our community, whether it’s going onan environmental march, or one year I remember a Year Two girl talking inLegCo. That’s our task—we have to work with that.

Again, the challenge is, we have our curriculum that we have to teach,and as soon as we walk out that door, into what I call beyond-the-classroomlearning, where that real world is, then you get people within the communitysaying “Hey, that’s impinging on my program!” or “You’re off on this tripfor two or three days, what about my class?” or a parent will say “Theyshould be in the classroom memorizing for a test”. Well, the world is bigout there, and unless we get out and experience it, then we will remain as abubble. That’s a real issue, and we’ve got to be conscious, and get peopleout there— experiential learning, I call it.


When I arrived here in 1994, we were a small school. Our entire staff fitupstairs in the staff room. We had our offices there. I guess you could equateit with “small town, big city”—today we’re big city. When I first arrivedhere, our curriculum was not international. We had the IB diploma, butour Year 7s to 11s did IGCSEs, which is supposed to be the internationalversion of the British curriculum, which I didn’t find to be very much at all,especially from a geographer’s perspective. Moving away from that, we’vegrown into the MYP program. I’ve seen significant improvement in what weteach as a program. But secondly, as we’ve grown in staffing, I’ve seen thediversity of the staff grow significantly. It would be interesting to comparewhat was the 1994 staff—where we were from around the world—and wherewe are from today. It’s my gut feeling—looking at my own department,there are ten people, and we are from six or seven nations. There’s thatdiversity there.

Where would I like to see it go in the future? I really see that our schoolneeds to keep our hand on high standards, which we do very well on, but alsoon engaging students in their own learning. We’re talking about the learner’svoice, and how do we harness the learner’s voice into the teaching paradigm?

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Because once we start to do that, the education system starts to evolve andbe more intuitive to a 21st century scenario. Including myself, a lot of whatwe do is still old-school in the sense that students listen while I teach. Wehave to break away from that, and get students more engaged with theirlearning. Of course, there are pitfalls when you have prescribed curriculumwith things you have to get through, especially with the Diploma. Certainlythe MYP’s five years, we’ve got a lot of breadth and scope that we can becreative. And that’ll come. Education is not like building a house— I canhave one architectural style, then right next to it have a completely differentone overnight. It takes time, because there are so many stakeholders, fromstudents, teachers, school, board, and the community at large.


One thing is when we’re looking at new staff in hiring, there has to be acomponent of assessing staff members’ good fit. And what is that good fit?Is a good fit a teacher who does what we wanted to yesterday? Or a teacherwho’s going to be providing us with new ideas and be creative? We haveto look for that in new staff. How do you change the ethos or the characterof the current teaching staff here? Well, you’ve got to make it exciting forthem. There’s a professional training aspect, there’s a management side,how do we get teachers to engage themselves? Ultimately, we still have theteacher in the classroom with the students. We rely on them to deliver thatnew dynamic or shifting learning approach. We’ve got to bring them—asthe old saying goes, “you can lead a horse to a trough but you can’t forceit to drink it”, we have to provide an exciting professional development insuch a way that teachers want to improve and change.

This is an interesting paradox in education—we’re supposed to be prepar-ing young people for the world out there—if you look at the private sectorout there, it’s rapidly changing, it’s change or sink— and yet education ingeneral, not just at this school, is slow to change. It’s not just a challengehere, it’s a challenge at every school around the world. Keeping staff excitedand motivated—that’s work, but it’s the rewards that come with it.

David is a Geography teacher and the Head of Humanities. He has been 18years at CIS, 24 years in Hong Kong, and decades on Planet Earth. Mymost memorable experiences at CIS are the out door ones, taking students,teachers and parents on interesting learning excursions.

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Trina Chan ’07I read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

CIS has been successful in achieving this for the most part. It does thismostly through community service work. It enables young students to learncore values like tolerance, respect, justice and equality. There are manyopportunities for students to get involved from Year 7 to Year 13. Fromwhat I recall, a few year groups are attached to specific charities. Thereare also activities during Project Week that enable students to work withorphans in Vietnam or build houses in Cambodia, for example. There’s alsothe CAS program, which enables students to choose activities and set theirpersonal goals.

There is an area in which CIS can make some improvements—that is, toplace more emphasis on the need for students to keep abreast with currentaffairs and issues. A lot of them aren’t well informed and up to date withthe news and global issues—possibly because they’re busy with school andCCAs. They don’t see reading the newspaper or news online as somethingthat will boost their academic grade, so it’s not made a priority. It’s greatthat CIS now has a Human Rights Group. It encourages an understandingof global issues, provokes discussion and raises awareness. It’s wonderfulto see CIS students getting involved in speaking up for human rights. It’sdefinitely beneficial for the students and moving in the right direction.


It does exist—it’s an elite school with facilities and resources that otherschools can only dream about. Most of the students here come from rela-tively sheltered family backgrounds. It’s slightly cut off from the real world.There are advantages and disadvantages to this. The good thing is that itprovides a safe, comfortable and nurturing environment where students arereally able to develop their full potential. The disadvantage is that there’snot much exposure to the real world except for Project Week and CAS, forexample, and to people of different backgrounds.

When you leave school and enter university, you find that you’re suddenlythrust into the real world. You’re exposed to people from all over the worldand all walks of life, from very different backgrounds. One problem withthe bubble is that, from my experience as an ex-student, very few of us are

37


resilient to new and challenging circumstances. I have a few friends fromCIS who went to universities in the UK who found it really tough settlingin and having to make new friends because all of a sudden you’re forcedout of your comfort zone. The fact that the school population at CIS isvery stable—by that I mean not many people leave CIS unless they haveto—means that there aren’t many opportunities to interact with differentpeople throughout your school life. What’s important for all schools, notonly CIS, is that we should focus on building students’ adaptability andresilience, just to better prepare them for adult life. We’re bound to faceadversity in our lives. It’s about how you deal with these situations andhow you cope that determines your success in life.


It’s much more technologically advance—you’ve got SmartBoards in ev-ery classroom, every teacher has a MacBook Pro, you’ve got the one-to-onelaptop program, iPads in primary. On top of that, there are briefing sessionsand meetings on how to use technology to enhance learning. CIS has defi-nitely changed for the better in the area of technology. It’s a developmentthat we should be proud of. Everything is much more efficient. There aremany new programs and software and apps which can be used to improveand enrich learning. But we might be focusing a bit too much, or devotinga bit too much time and money on technology. I feel that we could spendsome of that time and resources to further develop other areas, like teachingand learning. It’s important to strike a balance.

The establishment of the Human Rights Group is definitely a great devel-opment. Young people nowadays are becoming quite politically apathetic,as the result of extreme individualism. It’s great to see that CIS studentsare speaking up, becoming aware of global issues, discussing topical mattersand educating others around the school.

CIS is moving with the times in terms of technological development,but there’s still room for development in terms of promoting better com-munication. We could have more forums or platforms to openly discusscertain issues and give suggestions on how to improve students’ experiencesat school.


These are very important. They are ideals that all schools, not onlyCIS, need to aim for—whether it be forums or meetings or more effectivecommunication between students, teachers and the admin team. It’s goodto have a platform where you can speak openly and honestly about certain

38


issues. It would be nice to hear different views about CIS. It’s great to seethat students and teachers are so involved and committed to making changesand improving the school.

Trina graduated from CIS in 2007 and studied at the University of Cam-bridge. She has, since 2011, been a Teaching Intern in the English Depart-ment.

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Caroline Chin ’12I read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

CIS, on a practical level, does a lot of these things. There’s ProjectWeek, and there are so many charities out there, contributing to local andglobal issues. But I get the feeling that a lot of this might be on a verysuperficial level. With charities, for example, you get a huge burst of char-ities in Year 10, when you start to get service hours. This might not bethe case for everybody, but I do know for a fact that many groups do startbecause they want to gain more hours or write some of these down for theircollege résumés. Essentially, when they’re advertising for volunteers, theyalways mention that they’re going to give a certain amount of hours, evenbefore they explain what the cause is about. So on a practical level, andwhat’s written down on paper, it’s all very good. Students put hundreds ofhours into helping various issues and alleviating various problems in HongKong and around the world, but the motivations behind many people arequestionable.


There is a bubble at CIS, not necessarily directly because of the schoolitself. It might be because CIS has a very restricted group of students whocome from the same socioeconomic background. A lot of it comes fromparents and families. In that sense, there is a bubble because if you can’tafford to come, then you can’t come. It seems obvious, but it’s true. If you’refrom this sort of background, with many of these similar qualities, it’s hardfor us to become more worldly. That’s one of the purposes for Project Week.A way that CIS can improve this is if they have a financial aid program, sostudents can interact with people of different economic backgrounds. So it’snot just like “I’m pitying the poor, so I’m starting a charity group to helpthese poor people in these places I’ve never seen before”. And it’s not justus helping them—they can help us a lot too.

CIS does live in a sort of bubble, but it’s not entirely CIS’ fault, thoughit can be improved with a financial aid program.

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It’s hard for me to answer this. I don’t know if I see changes because I’vegrown older and everyone around me does too, or because the school actuallyhas changed. When I was younger, I thought this school was amazing inevery sort of way—with all these amazing people, amazing facilities, and it’sjust all so cool. As I grew older, I got to see a very different side of it—notnecessarily a bad side, but for example, I can see that the school can bebureaucratic. I think this stems from a fear that if we don’t follow strictprocedures and guidelines, then something might go wrong or might damageCIS’ reputation. This also stems from a lack of trust for the students. I knowit’s hard to change from saying “oh you have to tell us exactly what you’regoing to do”. It’s typical for a Hong Kong mentality, I guess. But I don’tthink it’s necessary.

Over the years, CIS has changed. This community has acknowledgedthat there are bad sides to it, so areas that CIS can improve in. In thissense, it has improved.


Dialogue and honesty are areas any institution should strive for—whetherit’s a company, or an association, or a school. Honest discussion is a hugepart of success—success not only on paper, but producing students who canthink for themselves, having a place where different opinions are welcomed.These are the foundations of any sort of modern governance—that you canvoice opinions and that’s how things improve. To do this, the school shouldbe more open to allow discussion on various issues. It also boils down to atrust—if they allow these discussions to occur, the school isn’t going to burndown. We’re not going to have huge riots. Hong Kong people are still goingto respect CIS. I don’t think there’s going to be a fear that CIS will becomean inefficient place where nothing gets done—people will respect the schoolfor allowing these sorts of discussion and being open to all sorts of opinions,whether it’s from an experienced school administrator or from a Year 7.

A way to make this happen would be for the administration to releasea letter, or an email, saying that we do support these different opinions.And then the school must say true to those words. On cutting down bu-reaucracy—I remember that during EE week, if you wanted to leave school,you had to get signatures from so many people. In these cases, bureaucracyreally hinders anyone’s pursuits for education and to learn different things.

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It’s almost like an obstacle, which is not what school should be. Schoolshould be conducive to receiving education or developing opinions or pursu-ing different areas, but a lot of times bureaucracy really affects us and hasa negative impact on this sort of feeling.

Caroline has been at CIS since 1998, and will soon be attending the Mas-sachusetts Institute of Technology.

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Martin CubbonI read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dent to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

In a world full of trite and ambiguous statements, the school statementstands out both in its entirety which I see as a moral code and in the specificbehavior it advocates which is clear, unambiguous and attainable by any-body. CIS does play a role in facilitating such behavior by all stakeholdersnot just students. It does this through the diversity of its teaching staff,student bodies, CISPTA organized extra-curricular activities and toleranceof internal debate. Having attended 9 graduation ceremonies, I have gath-ered a great deal of anecdotal evidence that there is a widespread practiceof many of the key elements of the mission statement by individuals whohave since left the school. If there are failures, they are probably becausethe school does not do enough to enshrine the statement as a moral code inthe minds of the school community.


Yes, I believe CIS does live in a bubble. However, this is first andforemost a protective bubble. You might say that US society in the 19thcentury was a bubble in which those fleeing religious persecution in Europecould flourish. It is a bubble formed by a feeling of association with the CISbrand. It is not physical nor is it in any way orchestrated. So the questionshould be is this a worthy brand with which to be associated? Is it onewhich fosters tolerance, debate and innovation? I think it is and I think thetrade-offs which come with being in a bubble are probably worthwhile butthey need to be kept in check. These trade-offs would be a lack of awarenessof other people’s circumstances and background and hence insensitivity toother’s needs. These trade-offs should of course be addressed under themission statement.


Yes, CIS has changed considerably since I first became associated. It hasmuch greater scale, has more resources, it is more confident as an institutionand this is reflected in attitudes and the behavior of the students and staff.

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It is a fundamentally stronger institution although inevitably still hasteething problems associated with being young and ambitious. We shouldbe careful not to lose sight of the higher ideals to which CIS strives. Todeliver on these higher ideals, set out in the mission statement, CIS studentswill need drive and determination in abundance. These traits can produceunwelcome outcomes as in any competitive environment, this is inevitableand should be put in context. Address unwelcome outcomes whatever theymay be but don’t compromise the ideals and culture of tolerance, risk takingand selflessness.

Martin is a CIS parent.

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Brian Liu ’12I read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

I honestly don’t know what to think about this because the nature ofevery mission statement has good intentions but at the same time can bekind of vague. When you have a community that strives to be reasonable andaccepting and embracing of all other cultures, there are a few difficulties.The case at CIS is that we are a very liberal community, but we are notalways necessarily a reasonable community. That comes with not actuallyhaving been exposed to these different views and individuals, local and globalcommunities. CIS to some extent does do this, but it’s very difficult to reallytake up this mission statement because it’s very ambitious. It’s difficult totake up because many of the socio-economic backgrounds that CIS comefrom are very good, we may try to be exposed at school but we’re still veryinsulated in our lifestyles and at home. To a certain extent, a school, CIS,has an obligation to protect the kids from certain exposures. But in order toreally achieve this mission statement, we really has to get out of our comfortzones and bring no pretense. That is to say, not constantly have the ideathat we come from this sort of background, they should be treated this way.There’s a sort of entitlement, and when you want to embrace all cultures andcommunities, you have to approach it very organically. CIS kids are verywell-knowledged about these issues, but we don’t think too much about it.


We have to try to see if a bubble actually undermines the education atCIS. Academically, CIS has shown an exemplary amount of success, withrecent college acceptances, CIS’ academic record is fantastic compared tothe world. Does it undermine the education here? I think it undermines themission statement. If you want to evaluate the CIS education in terms of themission statement, it does to a certain extent undermine the education. CISis academically great; kids are very good students. But in terms of reallyenlightening the CIS student body on the local and global issues, differentbeliefs and cultures, CIS still has a way to go. We can finally see that thisMS is being achieved when people at CIS start to adopt these principles astheir own. There are certain levels of of how we embrace ideas, the first levelis advocacy but a second level is when people live by it. I don’t see it happen

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very much at CIS. I see people advocating very loudly and very passionately,which is great, about certain issues. But I don’t see people living by them,understanding them on a very personal level, and only a few students haveachieved this understanding. In this way, the bubble undermines the CISeducation, and people come out of CIS not necessarily incredibly reasoned.


I don’t think CIS has really changed. I’ve only been here for threeyears, though I was here in Year 8 for a while. While it hasn’t changed,my vision for CIS has changed. I used to think the school is great—andI still do, it’s wonderful and I’m grateful to be a part of this community.But there are some issues, especially with how the Pastoral team extendsits jurisdiction, and the recent changes in the student council constitutionare great. It’s wonderful to see, it’s encouraging, edifying. The thing thatI want to change is how the governing bodies operate with each other. It’sstarting to happen. When I’m doing stuff in student government, like SSC,we often find that we’re all stepping in each other’s backyards because therewas so much overlap with how CIS jurisdiction works. I don’t think if it’strying to be a system where all the systems are overlapped and intertwinedsuch that when you try to deal with one system the whole system is dealtwith. I feel like if we differentiate the different roles more, that will makeCIS more unified and efficient. Unity is achieved in how different toolsinteract to create one product. When you have different bodies focusing ondifferent responsibilities, then you can have a coherent team. Maybe it’sthe Hong Kong mentality—we’re trying to do too much, trying too hard.Differentiating would help the stress level, people would be more calm indealing with things and the school would become more efficient.

Brian has been at CIS since 2004, and will soon be attending St. John’sCollege (Annapolis).

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Brian MulcahyThere is a widespread notion of a “CIS bubble”. Do you thinkthis bubble exists? And if it does, how might it undermine theeducation CIS provides?

The notion of a bubble could be probably applied to a lot of institutions,not only schools. That’s largely as a result of schools in the past yearsbecoming much more self-conscious of their identities. For example, publicrelations now is very important for a school. Branding is very important.The institutional identity in some respects very strong, and reinforces thenotion of a CIS bubble.

There are gradations of bubble in the world. For example, if you wereto go to a school in a small town in China, you would find that they too livein a kind of bubble. That’s the nature of the world we live in. If studentstake the opportunities that the school presents for them to interact not onlywith local communities but also international communities through, say,Project Week and CAS, the bubble is broken. It depends on the activationand initiative with students. There are a lot of good examples of studentswho have refused the bubble and tried to open up themselves to outsideinfluences. You can’t think your way out of a bubble, you have to act yourway out of it. Students have taken the opportunities to do that. But allinstitutions, even universities, have this bubble as a natural phenomenon.

The school should be providing opportunities for students to look beyondtheir horizons. CIS does that to a certain extent. It could do more. At thesame time, as students get older, it’s important for them to demonstrate theinitiative to break through.


I’ve been here 17 years. CIS was very school when I arrived. They hadjust gone through their second cohort of students. It was a young school.It had a central area for staff. There was a lot of faculty interaction. Thesedays the faculty is more atomized. At that time, there was a stronger sense ofcommunity among faculty. It’s less the case now. The year I arrived, or theyear after that—the first time we had e-mail. That was an exciting changeto happen. The buildings have changed considerably, especially with theLanguages and Arts building. The place has grown, the student populationhave grown, the expectation of parents have grown, and the curriculum haschanged. The school has improved in a lot of ways. Also, the pace of life hasquickened to the point that we don’t have time for reflecting on what wedo—that’s key to breaking through that bubble in the previous question.There’s a consciousness created by an extremely quick pace of life. If wewere able to slow things down, we would be able to reflect and value more

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of what we have.Voice and speaking up are fine, but listening too is important. Listening

arises out of empathy people have for each other in a community. It’s animportant aspect to community life. CIS has changed— one hopes for thebetter. Education in its institutional form will change considerably over thenext ten years. There are many things in school which hark back to the 19thcentury. We need now to be flexible enough, daring enough, risky enoughto change and to provide new ways of interaction. Not necessarily throughtechnology. Breaking down the metaphorical walls between year groups,for example—the ability to teach and mix classes across year groups, thewillingness to provide more to students so that they can be more creativein their learning, loads of ideas within the voices of students and minds offaculty that can improve the school. Attentiveness is key— attentiveness toone another.


All institutions should aim for honest and public dialogue—that shouldbe the ideal of all social organizations, from the smallest to the greatest.If CIS is part of this world, then of course we should aim for that ideal.Family, schools, governments should all do so.

For example, the way in which questions are framed and asked is key. Wecan communicate for hours and get nowhere. Good communication dependson people asking the right questions. The responses to those questions mustalso be managed and moderated so that effective answers are reached.

One would hope that students, faculty and administration collectivelyfelt that there are platforms in this school for us to exercise our points ofview. What’s the ideal platform for students to organize themselves so thatthey have a coherent voice? Not just the voice of a few people, but a coherentvoice representing the student body. That’s very important. What you findoften is that a part of voices represented and not the whole thing. Howcan you find mechanisms to enable that to happen? People have to showinitiative, people have to participate in citizenry of the school. If they deferor abdicate that, then they really have no grounds for complaint later.

I find that teachers have enough opportunities to voice their opinions,generally speaking. I can express my opinions on most things. But do wehave enough time to build coherent discussion? That’s a different question.That’s the key question. Do we dedicate the time that is necessary in orderfor good public dialogue to take place and be reflected upon? That’s whenyou slow things down for the benefits of that dialogue to be seen. It’s hard.It goes back to shaping public discourse so that it’s efficacious and hassome sort of utilitarian benefit—that decisions are made, whether by the

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Student Council, or by teacher in relation to class, or by the administrationin relation to the community. The decisions made must be well-justified,and people must feel like they have participated in dialogue that has shapedthe decision. A large part of that depends on asking the right questions inthe right way.

Brian is an English teacher and the Head of Year 13, and has been at CISsince 1995.

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Lucy Reading ’13I read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

The statement is really good in its intent—what they’re trying to putinto the students is great. But at the same time, the implementation issometimes lacking. You can become that kind of person, but the schooldoesn’t necessarily push you to become that kind of person. Bake sales andbubble tea sales, for example, don’t really have any relevance to the causethat they support. If a student said “I want to do a bake sale for moonbears and I want to make some cookies”, then this school should say “Howdo cookies have anything to do with moon bears?” That connection needsto be improved, so that people don’t just go to buy cookies because theywant cookies. Students should ask where the money is going to. That’swhat happens at CIS a lot—people focus on short-term solutions and easythings to do that don’t involve leaving CIS.


There definitely is a bubble at CIS. It’s a really small school, comparedto some others in Hong Kong, where there might be two hundred, or threehundred people per year. Even with the year, you’re in a bubble. It comesfrom how we’re not exposed to much diversity at CIS, in terms of socioeco-nomic diversity. Every single person here has either a driver or lives in abig flat on Hong Kong Island—Central, the Peak or something like that. Idon’t really know anyone who isn’t part of the expat or Westernized com-munity. CIS doesn’t do that much to make it a Hong Kong school. It’s avery international, but we have barely any contact with actual people fromwhere we’re supposed to be coming from. We’ve just become a bubble. Wedon’t have Hong Kong culture, we don’t have American culture, we don’thave particular country’s culture. It’s bizarre, and it’s hard for CIS studentswhen they leave. Even when I go to summer camps, it’s already a huge con-trast. I find it very difficult to suddenly fit in with people all over the place,so I think CIS doesn’t really prepare you for that kind of diversity.

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I came to CIS in Year 6, completely against my will. I didn’t like it atall. It took me a year to get into it, but when I came into the secondaryschool I liked it. I thought everyone was very nice, and didn’t have anyproblems with it. Slowly, as you get older, you start to see the faults witheverything—I don’t think it’s just CIS. It’s definitely become frustrating inthe past few years how everything seems to be a problem. It’s very commonnow to hear all your friends complaining about CIS. It’s very demotivating,to be at a school where you’re hearing people say how they hate it all thetime. It’s gone from happy to unhappy—but I don’t think it’s because ofCIS, and more because of people growing up. I don’t think it’s fair to saythat CIS has changed much. To me, it hasn’t changed much, and only thepeople have.

CIS could become much more cultural—if we had more festivals, morefun activities. It gets way too stressed at CIS. This has an affect on everyone.For example, at lunch today we played music at school. That’s a good wayto make people happy. Maybe if we had certain assemblies designated todifferent groups where they can hold these things, rather than making itsuch a hassle to do something like that. Maybe, for example, if we had aSpanish club that would come and do dances—but it wouldn’t be somethingpeople were pulled to, and people just wanted to go. If there was just moreof a thirst for that kind of feeling within CIS, that would be great.

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Why do you think that thirst isn’t strong, and how can it be madestronger?

There isn’t a thirst because it’s such a mesh of people here. Peoplearen’t really patriotic about their countries. I don’t think they realize thatthey have something to offer to other students. Because it’s not promoted,people don’t think about giving that. It would be quite easy to implement.We need someone to come to CIS, who is passionate, who has real vision,who incorporates the students, to make it a generally happier place. Notnecessarily a more successful place, not necessarily a place where everyonegets the best grades, but a place where stress isn’t an issue. Where studentshave been brought up to know how to cope with stress, where students areable to know that studying is not the most important thing. That’s a tinyfault of CIS, that it’s so academically driven—I’m not saying it has to bemore sport-driven, but just generally less academically-driven. People mightactually do better in life after CIS if they had broader passions or just anypassions at all. It’s very difficult to do the work at CIS, meet the pressurethat’s put on you, not feel like you’re falling behind and still do things outof school.

Lucy is a Year 12 student at CIS.

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Tika Sing BishwakarmaThere is a widespread notion of a “CIS bubble”. Do you thinkthis bubble exists? And if it does, how might it undermine theeducation CIS provides?

Yes, of course all our CIS students are safe here. We have a very goodenvironment here, and our maintenance staff and security staff very muchlook after our students. I hope we can do well.


Actually, I have no words on how CIS should change in the future. ButI started working at CIS in 2000. Since 2000, during these long years, therehave been so many changes—before, and now. Our students are very honest.We can often talk to students, and they will listen to us. So I think thereare no problems.

Tika is a Security Guard, and has been at CIS since 2000.

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Maureen TrebilcockI read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

It’s a very worthwhile statement, and it covers the huge entity of edu-cation, from the private and the individual to the global citizen, and that’swhat international schools are all about. Aspiring to be a bilingual schoolin Hong Kong is really at the cusp of what education really is all about in2012. It’s a lofty statement, but it’s worthwhile to state these things, andrecognize that we are in a global community.

I think there are five things that young people need in this day and age.We aspire to cover all of them, in terms of good judgment, breadth of vision,self-awareness, responsibility and curiosity. We want them to have a senseof wonder about the world, and also to be humble in certain ways. Theexperience at CIS is not about reaching a destination, which is a successfulgraduation in Year 13 and going on to your wonderful chosen university, butthe years that you are preparing for the world ahead. The journey has justbegun, and CIS is part of that journey—an important part. The journey islife, really, in all its wonders and joys and sorrows.


Yes, there definitely is a CIS bubble. But defining it is another thing,and whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing might not be the right question.We all live in a bubble, we all live within ourselves, our families. Most ofyou live in very wealthy families, an environment that provides with mostof the material things that life can provide in Hong Kong. You’re chauffeur-driven, well-dressed, in all the latest gear, you can go to the latest movies,you travel the world, you compare airlines the way kids in other parts of theworld are completely unable to even think about. So teenagers in even otherparts of Hong Kong have to contend with abuse—alcohol, drugs, violence,poverty in some ways. On the surface, from the students here, it costs somuch to be here it has to be a bubble. But I think we all live in a bubble.I live in a bubble because I’m an expat in Hong Kong, and I engage myselfas much as I want to with China, with Chinese and with Hong Kong, but Igo home to my apartment that is pretty standard, I eat pretty normal NewZealand food. I flirt with the culture here, but I go home to my own familyand my own culture. I feel as though I’m in a bubble here too—it’s quite

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an interesting idea. Between the confines of teenagers within parental andeducational limits, the bubble exists.

It doesn’t necessarily undermine your education, in fact I think it broad-ens it. Because you’re able to do and pay for all these extra-curricular types,it broadens your education. So you folks can pay to go on Project Week,not camping like other kids do in an up-the-road kind of thing. You’re ableto go anywhere in the world. The art students are not going around thegalleries in Hong Kong next week, they’re going to Spain. That’s huge. Ifthat’s the bubble, then let’s have the bubble.

CIS has to work very hard to give you young people an education that’soutside the bubble. We play at it—for example, the Year 9s went to Cross-roads a couple of weeks ago and we played at being poor, we played at apoverty game. Unless that’s taken on board and followed up and the Year9s are given other experiences, that’s all it is—just play. Being aware is onething, but Project Week, again, for a week or ten days you build houses oryou paint. Again you’re just playing in it, not living in it. As long as you’reaware that the other side of life is darker and uncomfortable and restrictive,and you are privileged, and you have responsibilities as a world citizen to dosomething about it, then I think we’ve succeeded, and not just in terms ofcheckbook charity but in terms of being sensitive to your aiyees and helpers,sensitive to the beggar on the street, sensitive to old lady who’s trying topush her cardboard trolley across the street. Humility is a big part of it.


I’ve been a teacher in a classroom, like all my colleagues, and later onin my career I specialized in teacher librarianship. It’s given an openingto work with everybody, to support and value all the subject areas. Thelibrary here at CIS is becoming integrated into MYP and the IB programs,and used as a valuable resource by teachers and students alike. I’d like tosee that more.

I find that my main purpose is to have as broad a collection of books aspossible. That’s supported by the English department, but it would be goodif we were supported by the other subject areas. We use the focus weeks, forexample. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Week is coming up, sowe promote reading and literature on that theme. Feminism —we just hadthat theme and discussion. A library in the 21st century isn’t just books.It’s digital as well, and I’d like to see a lot more access to the digital tools

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that we have. We need a bigger space. We need screens. We need areas forcollaboration. We need areas for performance. It’s all part of becoming a21st century library. We’re getting there, though we haven’t arrived yet.

Maureen is our Teacher Librarian who has been at CIS since 2009. She hashad a career in various teaching positions of responsibility and administrationin secondary and university educational institutions in New Zealand andBeijing.

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Laszlo VarroI read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

The statement is great—fantastic. That should definitely be one of ourmajor goals. Are we doing it? There are countless examples where we try toeducate you. We have community service, we have Project Week, we havefield cleanings, we have No Car Days. I tend to be more critical. I alwayslike to point out what’s not there, hoping that by pointing out the negativesides we can improve.

My main concern is that this is all add-on. This is not really part ofour education. It’s not part of any subject—perhaps you can argue thatgeography is an exception, but I’m not completely familiar with that. I’dlike to see it more be part of what we do, not an after school activity,not a weekend program, not a week off to distant places where we do abit of cleaning or dig trenches and come back and forget it. That’s themain point. We should do it, and we should do it a lot more. Do I seea solution? Honestly not. This society here is so crazy about measuringperformance—get the exam grade, be number 1 pianist, whatever you guysdo in your free time. All these others are not necessarily appreciated asmuch as I think they should be. I’m not saying that there’s no solution.But I don’t see a quick fix. Perhaps we just have to keep on what we’vebeen doing. Sooner or later, the message might get through—who knows?


I have to start with a preamble—that I have obvious limitations in an-swering this question. My Cantonese is nonexistent. I know very little aboutsociety other than what I can access through English-language papers anda couple of movies. Is there a bubble? Based on what I saw from my chil-dren, yes. They went thirteen years through here. 99% of their friends,acquaintances and activities were through CIS. Is that good or bad? I don’tknow.

The bigger picture about this isn’t just the CIS bubble. It’s a privateschool bubble—or whatever we call these schools, independent or private.I’ve been wondering whether it’s in the interest of the ruling classes in HongKong to maintain this set-up—“We are the rich people, let’s have rubbishpublic school, so that anyone who can’t pay will get this lower level education

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and our children will go to these schools and maintain this separation ofclasses”. Hong Kong is one of the richest cities in the world. If the issue ofpublic education could be solved anywhere, this should be the place. Butit’s not solved. After fifteen years here, I keep asking why not.

Have you been to a Band 5 school? Have you walked by a Band 5 school?Occasionally I just hop on a bus just to go somewhere I’ve never been. Iwalk around and I just look at some of those schools—misery. There aregood local schools, but how many people can get into those? You see onthe news all the time that people stand in line, looking at “my kid in, mykid out?”, after traveling for so many hours. Why don’t we have fantasticschools in this city for everybody? Surely there’s enough money. Partly Ispeak against my own interest. My interest is in this well-paying school withfantastic, selected students. If there is a bubble, perhaps there’s a biggerbubble than just the CIS bubble.


I’ve been here 15 years, since 1997. It changed in every possible way.When I came, it was a relatively small institution. I used to know the pri-mary school teachers. We had recess together, we ate lunch together. Now,I can’t hope for that. It has become a huge, almost industrial institution.There are so many people who never bump into each other, who never seeeach other, who really have nothing in common. I know it sounds reallybad because the big thing is “education is common, everything is for yourbest interest”. But I just don’t see people any more, even in the secondaryschool. There are science teachers I never see. They don’t come up here, Idon’t go there. There are no places to socialize. We just don’t have timeto socialize. It has become so time-consuming to maintain what the schoolexpects us to do. I used to have free time. Not any more. With MYP,the amount of paper work we have to produce has increased tenfold, fifteen-fold. That takes time, and sometimes that takes away time from teachingor preparation from classes. I’d say it’s the biggest change.

You guys are exactly the same—exactly as good as you’ve always been.It doesn’t mean that students are no longer as fantastic. It’s the amountof time and work we have to dedicate to maintain the same level, and justthe size of the institution. After a while, as the size changes, it will havean impact of how we can operate. We’re running out of classrooms, forexample.


Just yesterday I emailed a very good friend, an American guy who usedto work with me in Mexico. We’ve known each other for 20 years. For a

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while, we lost contact. He retired and moved back to the US. He was like“hey, I found you again, is this email still okay”? I responded “yes, I’m stillin Hong Kong”. He was very surprised, because he had always classified meas a person who does five or six years in a place then moves on. That’s howI used to classify myself. To some extent, I’m also surprised that I’m stillhere. But that’s to the credit of the school, of the city, of the students, right?The fact that I’m here must mean that I’m happy. I look at the negativesides and I’m critical occasionally, but the fact that I’m here means thatthis is a good place. As long as teachers are here, that’s a sign that theylike what’s happening here. Ultimately, what would you do if you didn’tlike the school? You’d move on. There are so many other institutions. As amathematics teacher, I would easily find a job. But I like it here. You guysare great.

Laszlo is a Mathematics teacher and the Head of Administrative Services,and has been at CIS since 1997.

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Simon WattsI read from the mission statement: “the school prepares its stu-dents to be compassionate, ethical and responsible individuals,contributing to local and global communities, respectful of otherviews, beliefs and cultures, and concerned to make a difference inthe world”. What do you think about this statement? Does CISdo this? How does it, and how does it not?

It’s quite a lofty statement. It’s quite a high ideal—wanting people to beproductive in the outside world but also aware and helpful of other cultures.That’s a really good goal to have. Some students definitely aspire to do that,and definitely do get there. There are a lot of kids who do lots of charitywork—and meaningful charity work, not just the token bake sale. That’swhere I think we fall down a little bit, especially in Project Week, which issomething I’ve been involved in as a coordinator for the past couple of years.We have trips that go away and “do service”—kids think eating lunch at anorphanage is service. It’s sort of a tokenistic approach to service that I’mtrying to get away from, and make sure the service that we do is ongoingand sustainable, rather than a week in Borneo and taking kids to a zoo andthen going home. I think that paints a wrong view of what service is to thekids.

Having said that, I really like how Year 7, 8 and 9 have the same charityall year, particularly Operation Smile. It’s really close to home. It basicallyhelps people on their doorstep, and Mrs. Chadwick’s been able to continuethat into Project Week. Another initiative has been started by Mr. Comp-ton on Habitat for Humanity, and Ms. Safaya’s doing a lot of stuff as well.We’re making an effort. I don’t think it’s there, I don’t think we’re meet-ing that goal like what the mission statement says, especially not for everystudent—it’s very difficult.

Especially in the older years, in the DP, it becomes more of a me-firstkind of attitude—how am I looking out for myself, to get into the bestuniversity, get the best grades, and the surrounding community might takea backseat, which is totally understandable given how much pressure thereis on you guys to succeed. I also think that it would nice if we stick toChina, as we’re the Chinese International School. We do a lot of stuff inSoutheast Asia, but it would be cool if we could do more for those in needin China.


I do think it exists, the students here all come from a very similar back-ground, and a similar amount of privilege growing up. They have similar

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expectations on where they are supposed to go after CIS. It’s quite reflectedin the social groups at CIS. Until they get older, they don’t have much con-tact with kids in other schools. I think Year 11, 12 and 13s start venturingoutside the realm of the CIS bubble.

I also think, to a certain extent, teachers are in that bubble as well.Sometimes I think: oh my gosh, this student is bugging me. And then Ithink about students I used to teach in New Zealand. At least these kidsaren’t trying to steal my shoes. I just have to slap myself and think: I’vegot it really good here, and whilst there is a bubble, the bubble is great forthe kids because it gives them so much ambition—they’re always trying tosucceed higher and higher.

But my homeroom loves hearing me talk about stories from the farm,things I did growing up, things like—you never learned to ride a bike. Andthose sort of life skills, even just cooking a meal, might not hinder themacademically but might put them on a back foot socially. But it’s nothingthey can’t get.


I’ve only been here four years, but in these years there’s been a transitionespecially in the leadership team. I think it’s actually developing positively.There’s a push within the school to get away from as much assessment,because I think the amount of assessments the kids face is crazy. And theway things are reported, and the way kids are assessed—the amount of that,and the meaningfulness of their assessments—are being addressed, which Ithink is really good.

But again I’ve only been here for a little while, so a lot of the change hasmore to do with how I’ve gotten used to things rather than how the schoolitself changed. It’s changed positively, especially the sports program. WhenI first got here, there was nothing going on as far as sports. But now I getan update every week about a team that’s won this and qualified for that.The creation of a Sports Director position, which Mr Mallen’s been doing,and new uniforms, which is something kids take pride in, have been a littlemore interesting.

I know a guy came here from an Ivy League university a couple yearsback. He was saying how applicants who come to universities now are, asfar as academics go, at such ridiculous levels, so universities are looking atthings like sports teams, like what they’re involved in outside of school, todifferentiate between who’s an interesting person and who might just be allbrain.

I’d like CIS to change with assessments. I’ve got a Year 10 homeroom.I’ve been their homeroom teacher since Year 7 and I love them to bits, butthey are just working nonstop and studying for a test every week. How many

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times do you need to test a kid? I’d like the focus to become more on learningthan on assessment. Maybe if you didn’t do assessments in the first half ofthe year, and it was all about what you’re learning, all experiential—butthat takes a while, and a bit of change of culture is needed. “ChineseInternational School”, everything that entails, with the more Asian schoolof thought of rote learning, of hammering lessons into people, and a moreWestern side, of more experiential and laissez faire learning. And it’s weirdbecause the Western style is looking at how it can replicate the Asian style,and the Asian style is looking at how it can replicate the Western.

Being a largely Western faculty, as far as staff goes, in an Asian school,we’re in a good position to cut down on a middle path between the two.Because the kids are so driven, I can try any lesson plan, and I know thekids are going to give it a go. The students are easy to get along with.


Yes, to a certain extent. With major changes, there needs to be trans-parency as to what’s happening and how decisions are made. I know thereare a lot of people who want to be involved in every single decision, but aleadership team is there to lead. So sometimes they lead, and you shouldfollow. And that’s just how it has to happen, otherwise nothing will getdone. My dad always says that “a camel is a horse that’s been made bycommittee”. So basically your initial vision could be entirely compromisedif you let too many people in on something. I understand that public dis-course and public forums are important, but there are times when leadersjust need to lead, and that’s just the way life is.

My dad’s an anti-bureaucrat and has been a hippie for most of my life,but I can see where strong leadership comes in. If you’re making a decisionabout how the curriculum is delivered, then sure, you need to make sureparents, teachers and students are aware of that. To be fair, I think it’sgotten better within the school since I’ve been here. I think about the fiveyears I was teaching in New Zealand, with gang fights and stabbing, andpeople getting stuff stolen. So coming here is like paradise, I love it, the kidsare great, and we’ve got a great staff here. Teachers here are really great.Sometimes it’s a case of people not really aware of how lucky they are. It’sa really positive environment here. Maybe a little insulated, so maybe tryto spread the wings a little. But otherwise, I can’t really complain.

Simon is a Physical Education teacher, and has been at CIS since 2008.

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Kellie AlexanderAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

We give students an amazing array of opportunities to inspire a lifelonglove of learning—not only in academics, but also in things like MUN, orthe Human Rights Group, or sports and music. We seek to give students abalanced approach to learning, across the regular academic fields and alsoacross all those things they might do to balance their lives as adults. As anadult, I have my job. But then I go out and play netball, I play my musicalinstrument. That’s a way to meet people, to relax and to find the enjoymentand balance in my life. In giving kids lots of opportunities, we try to inspirethem to be balanced individuals in future life.

That’s different in other schools. I taught at an American school beforewhere students, outside of academics, are asked to commit to one activity.If you’re in the volleyball team, you’re in it for a season— and then youcommit to four days of training and a game per week. It’s a much narrowerapproach to balance. From my own kids’ experience, they can be somewhatoverburdened at times. We give kids lots to do. They’re constantly engagedin numerous activities throughout the week. But by giving people theseopportunities, they get to try different things. For instance, you might bein the orchestra, play in the rugby team and do MUN—on top of that, youalso have your academics.

My daughter is going into Year 7 next year, in which she’ll be takingnine subjects. We offer different types of academics, and different types ofsubjects—she can try all of these in Year 7, and hopefully find what she likes.Learning is about inquiry. I find that CIS students do ask questions—andsometimes the hard questions. Sometimes CIS students do challenge us asteachers to really think. As a teacher, I think of myself as a facilitator forthat—I’m happy for students to question, to take leadership, to try differentthings. My role as the expert, so to speak, is not to talk and talk. Teachingis very different these days. It’s about giving kids opportunities to developthings they love.

You can see this with the kids in choir—they’re learning to conduct, torun rehearsals, to develop the inspiration and the knowledge which they willcarry onto university and later. That’s where I get my real thrill. I’ll seekids come back in a few years and say “oh look, I’m conducting the King’sCollege choir”. Even if I’m an account now, but I still really love to sing ina community choir—that’s a balance and a pursuit, even though it mightbe completely different from the career.

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A school is a setting to nurture students not only academicallybut also personally and socially. How does CIS fail and succeed increating an educative space for healthy and holistic development?

I’ve been teaching for almost twenty years. I have an emotion aboutCIS that makes me love this school. It makes me want to stay here for along while—and there are many other teachers who have stayed for a longtime. It’s a love of the kids, of the students. I can’t really tell you whatmakes me love the CIS kids so much. They will talk to you as a member oftheir community. I feel very close to my classes, very close to my colleagues.There is a keen sense of school pride—probably even more so than when Iwas in secondary school.

We’ve got something very special. One unique thing we have is continu-ity. Kids come right through reception all the way up. It gives more time tosee and to know them. We also teach across a broader range. At ShanghaiAmerican School, I taught in the high school—whereas here I’m teachingYear 7s right up to Year 13s. I see kids over and over again. I feel like Idon’t just know their names, but I actually know the kids.

Our school encourages kids to inquire, to ask, to speak to adults withrespect and with a sense of purpose. They’re not shy. They’re not afraid tospeak to adults, or to speak in front of their peers. When I meet alumni,they’re happy to come up and say, “Hi, I used to go to CIS!” When we haveassembly, people like to get up in front of a crowd and speak.

The types of people here are achievers. We don’t have any behavioralproblems, and that really helps. When I first started teaching, I taught ininner city London. It was like being a prison guard—you are just managingindividuals, who take away from those who want to learn. We don’t havethat here. We can actually teach. We can help every individual develop,because everyone wants to learn.

There’s been a push to work on the Pastoral system. Having the home-room with the same group of kids creates a community. I don’t know toomuch about it, because I’m not a homeroom teacher. But I know frommy colleagues that some homerooms are really tight—I don’t know howthat helps or hinders them knowing kids outside of the homeroom, althoughthey’re in different subjects with different kids. That home base creates asense of safety—you know that your homeroom teacher will always be youradvocate.

CIS students work really hard. They don’t get enough sleep. I don’tknow where the push comes from. When I first came here, I had kids whopresented things far beyond the expectations. Many students go over andbeyond. I’ve worked hard in my classes to really explain my expectations,give them examples, and give them time in class rather than homework allthe time.

I’ve worked to flip my classroom—to reverse what might be done at

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school and at home. As an example—in a Year 7 Bollywood dance unit.Instead of coming to class and preparing their dance moves, I send themlinks of Youtube to watch. They go home and work on their choreographythere. When they come to class, they might be doing their reflection, orhave already got the moves so they can use the class time better. That hashelped me create less homework. We can all seek to do that a little bit.Having my own two CIS students, one in Year 3 and one in Year 6, I worryfor her future. She’s staying up quite late—by the time she’s in Year 9, willshe get any sleep at all? But that’s partly because she’s working very hardon her Chinese, and also partly my fault. As a CIS parent, we want to givekids more tutoring and more activities. She’s swimming, she’s playing rugbyand doing gymnastics as well. We create a bit of tension that way—I don’tknow if it’s completely healthy. We’ve got a new counsellor this year, andit will continue to grow. I think there are so many kids here who just wantto go in and say “I’ve got so much work, I just can’t handle it”. Creatingthose opportunities for people to let loose is important.

We don’t always have down time here. That’s the case for any businessperson these days—you’re always switched on, on your mobile, your Black-berry, your computer. It’s going to be a challenge in the future. When dowe switch off? Perhaps CIS students aren’t good at switching off, and weneed to give them more opportunities and a space to do that. If you’ve gota free period, for instance, is there a space where you can go to switch off,or are you expected to be studying during that time?

How would you like CIS to change in the future?

I want to be around a long time. I’d like my kids to go all the waythrough CIS, because it’s a great place and they’re going to get a fantasticeducation. Those academic and time pressures do worry me. I would liketo see a better balance of the assessment tasks so that we’re not doing morethan is required. Looking at other IB schools—if we’re creating way moreassessment tasks, are they beneficial to students? In the past years as a PEdepartment, we’ve tried to look at that. What can we cut back and balanceto achieve our goals without overburdening students?

School spirit and pride have developed since I’ve been here. I’d reallylike to see that further developed. It was really nice to be down at primarythis morning where Year 5s and 6s did a flash mob. It’s great to see ev-eryone pumped and excited. I’d like to see more of that excited feeling atassemblies. Perhaps some of that can be developed by working hard on theHouse system, maybe with more House activities, and more pride throughthe Houses. It will be nice to see spirit throughout the year rather than juston Sports Day and Activities Day—that might be at chess competitions, ormusic competitions or Battle of the Bands. School pride, definitely.

There are plans to change the physical facilities, to make the cafeteria

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and library more central. The cafeteria is a bit of a mess right now— it’shard to get in, get your lunch and get out. By developing those physicalspaces, people can come together and get to know more people. Thereare a lot of things I’ve seen that are already developing. There are manymore support structures for students, like a new counsellor. We’re gettinga new University Counsellor. Those support services for students are reallyimportant when we’re so stressed and busy in our daily life.

In terms of sports and music, I’d of course like to see those grow. Formy choir, I want it to become an all-encompassing group for people to cometogether and just have a sing. It’s a little highbrow at the moment —they’refantastic singers—but I’d like to see it grow bigger so the good students cansupport those who are just learning to sing. As far as sports go, I’d liketo see more team pride. That might mean a presentation of uniform if youmake the team and a little ceremony, maybe within the team given by thecoach and captain. Certain teams have a strong bond, but not all. Beingpart of a team is a lifelong learning experience—you can learn to work withothers, to compromise, to appreciate the skill sets others bring to balanceyour own. It’s all about communication and teamwork—if you don’t havethat, you miss out in later life.

There are always things you can improve, but those are the three thingsimportant to me—school spirit, proper rewards for participation and a bal-ance of the workload. It’s a great school. As a parent, I’m really happy formy kids to be at this school. As a teacher, I love my job, and I love thestudents and what they become. I love that students will say “hello” to youin the corridor. I love that students will say “hello” to you in Central, orthat alumni come running up to say hi—that we still maintain that senseof community beyond CIS.

Kellie, since 2009, has worn a number of CIS hats—teacher, parent, coach,choir director, and soon to be Director of Sports and Activities. She lovesthe gym and she’s the “go to person” for workout of the week. She hasbeen known to make some of the recent graduates vomit during attempts ather “Winter warmer workout” and she likes to wear penny tees with mottossuch as “Your workout is my warm up” and “Strong is the new skinny.”She is a CIS lover and supporter and her teaching goals and hopes for thefuture of Sports and Activities are 100% student focussed. “I have no hiddenagenda,” she says, “I just want this to be a great place for students, and fortheir participation in activities and their school spirit to feature strongly intheir school memories, like they do mine. I loved school. I guess that’s whyI never left!”

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Kate Brashear 文 ’14According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

With regards to the statement, it’s a good aim. As far as CIS is con-cerned, I’m not sure if CIS achieves it. In some ways it does. But forexample, with reflections, there’s a lot of work that just has to be done,instead of work that explores or is there to engage with a love for learning.There’s a lot of time-filler work, and a heavy focus on grades which is sort ofunavoidable, I suppose, which detracts from intellectual curiosity. In someclasses you have to learn what you just have to put down to get the grade,as opposed to what you can actually get out of the assignment, or what youwant to get out of it, and how you can take things further.

CIS is very much classroom bound, and that definitely takes away fromthat aim. You just feel that things are for the classroom, stay in the class-room and don’t really have any connection with the outside world.


CIS is very academically focused, so things like sports and music tend toget overlooked. There’s an aspect of not-valuing things outside of academics.Also, a lot of the time, you’re encouraged to go back to academics and toleave personal and social things for outside of school. Most of the time,things like CHOICES really don’t seem worthwhile. You don’t really getanything out of them.


I’ve been here since Reception, so that’s quite a long time. Has itchanged? There’s been a lot of development, as in physically building newbuildings, putting new technology. As an environment, I’m not sure ithas changed. It has always felt the same as me, other than buildings andthe field, I haven’t noticed much change in the atmosphere. Recently, thechanges with the spirit squad and the Honor Code, and the idea of tryingto build community spirit, it has been a big change for me, and I’m not sureif it’s positive or not. It’s a very different approach to school. Everyoneis pretty proud and happy to be at CIS, but the idea of making that more

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public and visible in the form of having a mascot, having a cheerleadingsquad, is a big change.

A lot of these recent initiatives are just not necessary. One-to-one laptop,especially, just isn’t needed. It seems to be more of a gesture for show, toshow that we can do this, we’re a big modern school, and we can. Theschool has been very stable for a long time and now changes are comingin quickly—I don’t know if it’s because I used to be in Primary and didn’tnotice anything, but it seems that there are a lot of changes coming inat this time, both from the students, like the Student Council, and fromadministration and their side. I’m not sure what to make of them yet.


Any group needs to work for those, and CIS is definitely included in that.Going back to the first question, it’s part of being an adventurous learnerwith a love of learning. We pride ourselves on being an international school,and if there’s no dialogue going between different people, then nothing reallycomes out of that. From a student perspective, there has to be that dialoguegoing on if we want to learn.

It’s important for any institution to have honesty and dialogue so that ev-eryone knows what’s going on. The academic focus means that often there’snot much dialogue about anything. Everyone does their work by themselves,and gets that done, but there’s not much dialogue between students—oftenthere’s more dialogue between teachers and students than among students.Also, with the changes coming in recently, there hasn’t been much dialoguebetween students and everybody else. There are these big initiatives, butoften we don’t know what’s going on. We don’t know what the purposes are,and we don’t know how it’s going to affect us. CIS should try to open thingsup for discussion. More discussion has to take place about everything, fromimportant things to more everyday things, to issues in classrooms to howthe school is developing.

Kate is a Year 11 student at CIS.

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Jonathan Chan 同 ’12According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

If you look at CIS, you see a lot of top students who get into gooduniversities and are really intellectuals in their own way. But I don’t thinkthey are really products of CIS. CIS is an extremely exclusive school, andthe pool it chooses from is already really good, so the quality of studentsis relatively high compared to other schools. But to say that CIS itselfpromotes lifelong curiosity and learning is a stretch. It’s partly because theIB itself is pretty broken as a system —the IBMYP system, that is, whichjust doesn’t work at all.

I do think that CIS has quite a few good teachers, and teachers are veryimportant to learning. At the same time, we do have some not-so-goodteachers. It’s not only the teachers who dampen the curiosity, though. Ingeneral we sometimes get complacent. It’s not that easy for a school to beintellectually stimulating. Personally, I think that if you had access to alibrary and went there every day, you’d be more stimulated than you wouldbe here. Teaching quality fluctuates between departments, and even withindepartments. Sometimes you’re stuck with a teacher for a long time. Sofor me in the sciences, I was stuck with some teachers who weren’t thatgood, and it dampened my curiosity for a long time. I’m really interested inthe sciences, and I’m probably going to pursue it at the college level, but Inever really was that curious—I was curious, but it was severely dampenedthroughout my MYP career.


It goes back to the first question about intellectual curiosity. A lot ofpeople’s personality and how they interact socially is really linked to theirintellectual curiosity. The problem I think with CIS is that, on the one hand,you’ve got a lot of inherently good students, extremely talented people in allthese subjects, but there isn’t a mix of different backgrounds, so in that senseCIS also fails because even though it attracts top students who themselvesare already intellectual, the lack of different backgrounds set the personaland social education backwards.

That said, I’ve heard of schools where the bureaucracy is even stronger.In the recent years, we’ve seen some victories for the student body, and Ithink that itself is a plus for CIS. As bureaucratic pressure at CIS lessens,

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it’s going to be better for personal and social development.


I arrived in reception, so I’ve been here for 14 years. I’ve seen reception,I’ve seen primary, I’ve seen secondary. I actually used to quite like CIS,because when I was younger I used to think a lot of people were almostinfallible. I looked up on a lot of my peers and teachers—it was an innocentperspective. I bought into the image that CIS tries to make. Over time,I’ve seen more of the darker side of CIS. That’s the main thing. Of coursethere were many physical changes. I remember CIS looking very differentback then.

I’d like to see a better-informed use of computer technology in class.I’m a pretty strong advocate for computer science education, especially ata younger age , around Year 7 or Year 8. CIS could benefit a lot from thatif they do it right, and I don’t think they’re doing it right as of now. I havea lot of ideas—but that would be what I would like to change the most.

First of all, the CT program that IB developed is just not good at all.Programming has to be much more important at a young age. We shouldstart programming in Years 7 or 8. CT is sort of a joke these days— es-pecially at Year 11 or Year 10 level. The Mac system that a lot of peopledidn’t like—it has its merits, but in general it didn’t really work out aswell. I don’t know what I think about the one-to-one laptop program. ButI hear a lot of people say “look at them, they’re all just gaming”. For me,a lot of how I learned computer science stuff was just at home, gaming ev-ery day. But I came to use the computer really well. Gaming has a lotof professional computer sciences these days. Games themselves are a typeof creation that you can only associate with computers. When you play itevery day, you get curious in a lot of different things that a computer gamehas, and from there it’s just a really good pathway towards different formsof computer science education. But maybe that’s just me, because I’m re-ally interested in computers. Some people could be interested in computersthrough the one-to-one laptop system, and some might not. It’s a wasteof money, maybe—but we shouldn’t discard it completely. Some parts orsome forms of that concept deserve merit.

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Maybe CIS could start one hour later every day—that would be better.A lot of things boil down to the IB—I don’t think it’s the best system in

the world. I don’t know of a better system, but many schools, well-regardedby people I know, don’t have the IB or AP but have their own systems.

Jonathan has been at CIS since 1998, and will soon be attending the Uni-versity of California, San Diego.

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Kaitlin Chan ’13According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

To some extent, CIS can blamed for the grades-culture that we’ve fos-tered. People often complete work more inclined to be graded highly asopposed to what they’re personally expressing or responding to the curricu-lum. But it’s up to a student’s personal attitude towards school to decidewhether they want to be truly expressive, or truly gain something from it.It is possible to go through high school and do well, but not be intellectuallyengaged and thinking deeply and considering complexities and alternatives.I feel like a lifelong love of learning should be fostered independently, in thesense that it’s a person’s drive. If they’re driven to work hard and studyhard and be really engaged with the topic, they’re gonna have that lifelonglove to learn and discover things. Or they can be apathetic, uninterested,and I doubt that they’ll have lifelong learning. I don’t think the school isresponsible for this.

But “independent”, “critical” and “creative”—all those factors are en-couraged by the school. The CIS curriculum is not entirely textbook-based.We’re usually asked to consider alternatives or to respond to the topic ina personal ways. When people read the mission statement to me, I mightcringe a little because it sounds just so full of ideals. But those parts youmentioned seem to be supported by the school.


The methods that CIS uses to promote this do seem sort of standard,almost like it’s from a brochure—in the sense that it often goes like, “joinschool teams”, “be interested in a cause you like”, or “join the school’s artteam”. But if people actually engage with the school community, these arewhat helps them mature socially and learn about what they’re interestedin doing. Although it may seem cheesy to be encouraging people to doactivities and sign up for things, this approach is what helps CIS studentsbecome well-rounded and holistic. Most CIS students I know do a varietyof things. They’re usually not solely driven to one thing because they liketo be constantly learning, be constantly creative. CIS does foster a prettyencouraging atmosphere.

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When you’re younger, you’re not really aware of the school’s adminis-tration and bureaucracy. So I don’t really know how that has changed. Butif you look at the old yearbooks, when CIS was small, it was more concen-trated on the dual-language learning. It really encouraged the importance ofboth English and Chinese, as opposed to either. That was more of the corephilosophy at CIS when I was younger, or when CIS was in its foundationyears. As CIS has expanded, it has become more exclusive—now we have areputation as an elite school in Hong Kong, or as a really expensive school.It has a reputation to maintain. Instead of being represented by our stu-dents’ experiences and stories, it feels that we’re represented more by ourIB results and our rankings. It’s become more quantified and numerical.It’s become like a financial enterprise. More and more I hear about howpeople pay to get into CIS. It has become more commercial, as opposed tolearning-sided. It’s less emotional than it was before. The CIS atmospherehas become more of this drive to get to the top and be the best. It’s morenumerically competitive in that sense.

As a kind of creative person, when I first came to CIS I thought that I wasan outcast. I couldn’t do anything because art at school was more like “youhave to do this”. I felt really insecure about the fact that many roles at CISwere glorified, but the stuff I was interested in seemed isolated or strange. Ihope that CIS students in the future will have more opportunities to engagein the arts. As an artist, I feel like art is really stifled at CIS. It’s becomemore of a “yeah, I’ll take art because it’s easy and I can chill”. Art is notreally encouraged as something that people can be really passionate about.A few initiatives student have tried to pitch—that I’ve tried to pitch—forcreative ventures at CIS still feel really dreamlike and whimsical as opposedto something more concrete. Art doesn’t necessarily get the school results.We’re not like a track team—we’re not going to get people best times. Theschool isn’t entirely sure what it has to gain by fostering a more encouragingarts program. But there is so much potential for art to be more of a love atCIS than a subject.

Sports has developed so much at CIS. We have a mascot. There’s a lotmore team support, a lot more reaching out. CIS teams fly everywhere anddo everything. That’s really great, and if we had that program for artists,that would be awesome.


I would definitely say that these are aspects of CIS which require im-provement—now, and continually. If you think about all the rules and

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regulations that are continually enforced yet without preliminary studentdiscussion or backing—I would say that CIS really needs to work on thisarea. Student find it difficult to think of themselves in connection to therules. Students are interested, but if students had more opportunities to beengaged in policy-making and the atmosphere at CIS and the restrictionsand rules, then people would feel less like “oh, it’s teachers and administra-tors and us”. The whole school would be working towards a more unifiedenvironment of democratic decision-making.

Even with the one-to-one laptop program, which is supposed to be aneducation-based initiative, I’ve already seen so many abuses. Students ab-solutely ignore their teacher. This is not the teacher’s fault, because it’shard to control a student if they have to use a computer. The school, eventhough they kept mentioning the program, just talked about the programlike it was already there. Once it happened, it was just like “okay, it hap-pened”. I wasn’t even surveyed. I didn’t even have an outlet for opinionsI have about face-to-face discussion and the importance of a classroom dis-cussion environment as opposed to one with laptops. We had a discussion inYear 11 English, with Ms Parker. We were all talking about how importantit was for us to really engage with each other in this discussion format, howthe class grew together as a whole, and have an environment where everyonecan express their views. I’m not saying that laptops kill this wholly. Butlaptops do provide this ostracizing environment where everyone is attachedto this entity. There isn’t as much of a sense of discussion or ideas in class.A quote I once heard that has stuck to me—“wherever you are, you have tobe all there”. So if you are somewhere else, you can’t really be intellectuallyengaged in class. This is especially important for, say, English or History.


CIS is great in the sense that it has all the resources and facilities toreally empower and equip someone. But at its core, it still needs to work ontransparency.

Kaitlin been at CIS since 1999. Her greatest achievement thus far wascompleting Super Mario Brothers II and III (III’s 8 worlds were solvedwithin a single week!) She hopes this will enable her to absorb Luigi’s thePlumber of Justice’s qualities of agility, strength and heroism. She wouldlike to extend her thanks to CIS and Kanye West/Daft Punk for making herwork harder, better, faster and stronger.

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Jeremy Chen ’15According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Having been at CIS since Reception, I’ve experienced it fully. This isn’treally an environment that I find comfort in, that I find a place where Ican completely express myself. It’s rather a place I tolerate. It’s almostlike there’s this politically correct trend of thinking. People become narrow-minded in thinking that they’re open-minded. It’s one thing to say thesethings—it’s another to act this way. I believe that CIS has not completelyacted this way.

We have classes like Enrichment, and guest speakers come in. But a lotof the things CIS tries to teach us are completely one-sided. They don’tactually give us all the facts. They’re trying to make us believe what theysay. Outside of the classroom, this seems to have really affected the studentshere and their way of thinking. It has completely changed them.

A recent example—the whole KONY thing. Everyone just started get-ting really into it without realizing what it is, what they were trying to say,or what they were standing up for. Again, CIS has ended up teaching areally one-sided method. I don’t know if this is actually what they intendto do. I hope that they will change this some day.


CIS has helped me grown in a way it has not intended to. It has helpedme deal with the more narrow-minded people, or with certain situations. It’smore like there’s a correct method of acting a certain way, and I’ve learnedthe hard way that you have to be that way in order to achieve some sort ofacademic success here. Most people who come to CIS are overprotected byCIS. They aren’t well-informed. They’re almost incapable of thinking forthemselves to an extent. They lack a certain exposure—even though CIS isa really informed place.


I’m not sure anything has really changed since I’ve arrived. I’ve beendealing with the same people, the same kinds of people in terms of peers andclassmates. As far as teachers go, they have pretty much been the same.

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Sure, there are the exceptional few that might have made an impact. Butnot much has changed, really.

I would like students to be given more freedom to think. I feel likethere’s some sort of oppression here, where we’re limited in our freedomof thought. CIS is trying too hard in being this open school where peopleare open-minded that somehow they’ve caused the opposite effect— where,again, there’s a trend of people saying and believing in whatever is politicallycorrect without truly understanding it.


They are definitely important. What you’re trying to achieve with thisbook right here is a good method of approaching this. By introducing alarger variety of new ideas would already make a big difference. In practicallydoing this, I’d say we should change the style in which CIS teaches itsstudents. CIS seems to have this really good reputation in Hong Kong asone of the best international schools. A lot of the times I really wonder ifit lives up to this expectation. There is so much in CIS I could criticizeabout—but the problem is, no-one can actually be bothered to do anythingabout it. No-one’s willing to do anything, no-one’s trying to change this. CISdoesn’t provide the student with enough freedom to approach the learningprocess in a way that you might find better or might want to. It’s like youeither follow my way, or you get a really bad grade. There’s no questioningthat. There’s no open discussion to that. There’s no criticizing that. Attimes, it becomes really unreasonable.


At the moment, I feel like CIS is ignoring a lot of its problems. It’sjust turning a blind eye. And if this continues, CIS will not maintain itsstandards as the good school it’s expected to be or once may have been. Asfar as I know, it’s overrated. But again, I’ve been here since reception, andI haven’t really been at any other school.

Jeremy is a Year 10 student at CIS.

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Micah CookAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

It does do it in some ways. There are a whole lot of things that givestudents the chance and the ability to tap into different subjects. We havesome pretty creative teachers, which should develop, in theory, the idea thatstudents should be lifelong learners. This sort of intellectual curiosity cancertainly be tapped within individual classes.

How it’s not done—there’s a limit to the amount of classes a studentcan take. So even if a student was intellectually curious about a subject,like psychology, it’s not offered at our school. In general there tends tobe so much emphasis put on grades, by the students, by the parents andsometimes even by teachers, and that can kill curiosity in some ways. So,for example, you end up studying for a test instead of looking for a generalidea about what’s going on in the world. I’m consistently surprised whenI ask CIS students, “oh so what do you think about what’s happening inSyria?” and they have no idea what I’m talking about. There can be anisolation, as students see the small picture of university as their idea ratherthan the large picture of being globally aware.


There are two parts to that issue, if you really want to think about it.Firstly, how much responsibility does CIS have to do that? And secondly,how much are they achieving? There are some initiatives that have goneforth, but part of that responsibility lies with the parents. And how much ofthat responsibility lies with the school? In general, education has been push-ing forward as being more and more school-centered, and that we do needto have well-rounded students who understand many different things—wewant them to be safe, to be educated, to be diverse, to understand theseideas.

How much a school is able to do in this area is partly dependent onculture and partly dependent on how much the parents are allowing. DoesCIS try to do it? Certainly in some aspects they do, and in some aspectsthey fail miserably in doing that. How much of that is their responsibility?That’s another question. We do want social responsibility and we do wantto help them develop as individuals, but how much a student is willing todevelop personally, how much they’re willing to open up to staff, for example,

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is very much individual. It’s very hard for a school to force those issues.


I don’t think it has changed much, since I’ve only been here about eightmonths, but I would like in the future for a more organic idea of partic-ipation among teachers and students. They want to make changes, butfundamentally it’s difficult to do that. I don’t know where that resistancecomes from. I’m not going to say it’s the administration’s fault, because theadministration actually does sometimes support certain ideas. But betweenthe support and implementation of these ideas, there’s a difficulty in makingthem happen. I’m surprised at the number of bureaucratic obstacles you canhave within a school that’s only this young—25 years! I came from a schoolthat was 125 years old, and when I came here, I’d heard that it would berelatively easy to make changes, that we still have that ability. But it seemslike we’ve walked into a certain content, a certain way of presenting thingsand a certain way of doing our schedule, which isn’t necessarily conduciveto great educational experiences and great learning for our students. Butchanging it doesn’t seem to be much on the table. It’s not that there’s a lackof discussion on how to do that, and what would be best practice —it mightbe time limits to what we can do. But it’s just not changing as rapidly asit could be and not evaluating itself in ways that would be beneficial forstudents and teachers.


I fundamentally disagree with the view against organic growth of ideascoming from bottom-up. I don’t see the point, because that’s exactly whatwe do want. In order to foster that, we need to create stronger organizationsfor teachers, and stronger organizations for students, for them to be able toexpress what they believe. That requires much more active participation,and more of an active push from students as well as teachers. And I thinkit’s happening. If you look at the new forums set up by Andrew Mumm andClaire Yeo, you’ll see that they actually are trying to get teachers to discussthe controversial topics at CIS.

There is a feeling that there’s a lack of voice in what we can actuallydo. We have a lot of control over what we can do in our classrooms, buta lack of voice in where CIS is actually heading. For a school that pridesitself on being on the academic cusp, CIS needs to evaluate itself a little bitmore, and the best way to do this is through their staff, because they havea variety and wealth of experience that can be a huge benefit to CIS if giventhe opportunity.

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And I think the students as well—they come from diverse views, diversebackgrounds, with a lot of different ideas that are floated around, and theygenerally have a desire to make an impact and lead policy. And they seehow these policies are directly implemented for them. So, if we institutepolicy without allowing student feedback, without an evaluation of whetherit works or not, if we don’t do pilot programs more often at different gradelevels, receiving not only teacher but also student feedback, how are we goingto grow as as an institution?

Micah has been at CIS for what seems like more than a year. His manyaccomplishments include touching his toes, speaking Spanish to people thatdon’t understand him, and sleeping eight hours on weekends.

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James DunlapAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

I believe in general it does. No institution is perfect, but in our experi-ence many of their teachers at CIS have successfully encouraged this, andthe leadership, notably Dr. Faunce, is committed to it. In the case of ourchildren (Isaac and Chloe), the results have been much as I have hoped, andthey both have these values. Of course that’s not all CIS’s doing: my wifeand I have a lot to do with it, and so do friends (theirs and ours). Last butnot least they themselves have decided what kind of people they want tobecome and to be.


I think here too CIS has largely succeeded. Our kids have had many pos-itive and educational experiences not just academically but also personallyand socially. Our kids have made friends with many fine people (includ-ing yourselves!), and school activities (in their case particularly music) havebeen a big thing for them.

I might add that “positive” here doesn’t just mean experiences whichare pleasant and fun at the time, it can also include things which weren’tmuch fun and were difficult to deal with (life will always have its share ofthose), but from which you learn and grow. Our kids have had those, too,and people at the school (teachers, staff or their friends and fellow students)contributed to the positive outcome.

One concern I have always had is that the great majority of CIS studentsare from pretty privileged backgrounds, so the school social environment isa bit of a bubble in which they mostly pick up values and a sense of what is“normal” in terms of living standards and daily realities which is pretty farup in the clouds, but the students themselves may not realize that and tendto take it all for granted. For that I don’t blame the students: it’s humannature to regard what you are used to, your own experience, as “normal”.And the school can’t do too much about it other than try to expose studentsto some “out-of-bubble” experiences, e.g. the project weeks and communityand service requirements, but those have their limitations.

I went to public schools in Canada as a kid where I was exposed to abigger cross-section of society at school than you lot at CIS are, and mywife, like most Hong Kongers of her generation, was poor as a kid and

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went to public schools with lots of other poor kids. So we’re both awarethat CIS is unlike what we experienced as kids in this respect. You can’treally “blame” CIS for this, but we have always made considerable efforts tomake our children aware, both by talking to them and by giving them otherexperiences (both in Hong Kong and on holidays) that the world is a muchbigger, less wealthy and more diverse place than just CIS would make youthink.


I agree that those things too are important and that CIS should aimto promote them. Again, CIS isn’t perfect (nobody is), but on the whole Ithink it has done pretty well under this rubric too. There can sometimesbe conflict or tension between the many different school goals or functions(e.g. public dialogue / democratic values vs. administrative efficiency /maintenance of rules & discipline), and different perceptions of these, suchas in the “bag rule” debate, of sainted memory, but even that didn’t endtoo badly.

James is a CIS parent.

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Allen FrostI just wanted to say that it’s pretty easy to be critical of CIS. Certainly,

the questions invite a kind of critical response. However, I want to note thatthe school was an excellent employer for the three years I was there. I workedwith some really intellectual and passionate colleagues and taught someincredible, talented, motivated, generous, kind students. It’s important tokeep this in mind as you enter this exercise. I guess this is all to say thatI am hesitant about biting the hand that fed me. But I will answer thesequestions to the best of my ability.

According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

CIS encourages all those things. It encourages them even in the contextof having to produce the highest scores on all the different tests and ex-ams—moderated, samples, MYP, IB. It would be pretty cynical to say thatCIS encourages intellectual curiosity only as it’s going to benefit students inMYP or IB assessments. Knowing a lot of the teachers that I worked with,we both understand that it’s necessary to have those values or those habitsamong students in order to do well academically. But most of the teachersI worked with really did believe that all those things were really important,and actively strove to instill those values and attitudes in students.

CIS instills those values in a number of ways. I had the privilege ofattending a couple of weekends away, like with the geography class to TungPing Chau. I got to go with Year 10 once—it was science, geography trip,where the students were having to produce results but were also given ex-traordinary freedom to figure out how best to arrive at those conclusions,how best to complete those assignments.

Certainly in the English department, we were constantly encouragingstudents to read wildly, to ask questions, to consider the things we werereading even though at the end you had to produce a piece of writing thatwas supposed to be good. I really do think that in the classroom, a lot ofteachers are really hoping that those critical thinking habits will carry pastthe immediate event, which is MYP or IB.

Is CIS successful in inspiring students to a lifelong love of learning? Idon’t know. I was wondering when I was reading this whether there havebeen any longitudinal studies of CIS students. That is to say, asking studentsright when they graduate about certain habits or attitudes towards learning,and then asking them at the end of their university career, then maybea couple of years into a job they have. It’s really easy to say, “I’m an

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independent thinker”, “I love learning”, but how do you really measurethose things? It’s really hard. The cynic in me recalls conversations I’vehad with CIS students who have gone on to university and beyond who,to me dispiritingly, have entered into the business world or finance. It’slike “oh, you were such a great artist or mathematician.” It’s too bad thatthese habits are gone, but I can’t expect every CIS student to go on to bean independent painter and activist, or writer, or English teacher. It’s ameasure of the trust that CIS places on its students—that hopefully thevalues it tries to teach will in fact will out. That is to say, they will manifestthemselves.

With all those glittering generalities about curiosity, independent think-ing, being creative, it’s important to remember as well that CIS is a fairlyyoung school. It was created to serve a very certain need— students inHong Kong who want to get the kind of education in a Western model.Certainly the International Baccalaureate, like it or not, is a Western modelof education. They want to get those skills to get into the universities oftheir choice, but also they want to engage with Mainland China. They wantto be able to speak Chinese and to be part of that culture. So there is akind of outcome CIS wants for its students. To demand that students atCIS both fulfill all those obligations out of a very specific place and timeand to have all of these glorious ideals of about curiosity and independentthinking—which remind me of the Athens of Socrates’ time—maybe that’sa pretty tall order. I generally think it’s going on at this school, and I hopethat it is reflected in its students even after they leave.


To me, the students at CIS were incredibly social. The school verymuch provided that space for socializing. I think of the dozens of trips thatstudents are able to take—both academic and more social events. Sportsteams, arts ensembles, clubs, activities—it seems that this school is reallya place where students were not only learning in the classroom but alsodeveloping friends and that’s borne out by students who have gone on touniversity. Their CIS friends are the closest friends they have. You’ve askedabout the CIS bubble. Yeah, there’s a CIS bubble. It’s weird that a lot ofCIS students seem to stick together even once they go to university far faraway, but perhaps that’s a testament to the really close bond that they format CIS. In that sense, it absolutely succeeds in creating a space for healthyand holistic development.

One downside would be the work pressure. I knew a lot of students whogot burnt out on the work they had to do—pages of pages of writing thatwere required. I don’t know if that ever manifested itself in detrimental

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personal behavior. It doesn’t seem like that was too much of a problem.I really don’t see many places where CIS fails in that sense. I really dothink it’s a healthy and holistic place. Sure, people were spending theirentire nights working on projects and not sleeping. That’s not good—but ingeneral, I think students leave the school having been very grateful that theyspent their time there. They don’t resent that kind of academic pressure.And, if anything, perhaps this is a sad fact—the academic pressure they feltin high school sets them up very well for a university setting.

How would you like CIS to change in the future?

That’s quite a big question. What I sense from recent students and thoseof you who are putting this volume together is a movement which is to saythat “okay, this school is a place where largely people with a lot of moneycan go, they’re smart, they work hard, but it’s not cheap, and because ofthat there’s an expectation for alumni to succeed in ways that are measuredoften times financially.” What I wonder is, should the school continue tocost so much? If it’s not going to cost so much and open itself to peoplewho couldn’t afford it otherwise, where is that money going to come from?Could it maintain its prestige? You’re really seeing this clash between thepure academic values that an elite school would offer, and the democraticpressures to open itself up to be more meritocratic, which is going on in alot of places in the world. It will be a tough decision. I’m not sure what thepowers-that-be have to say about this.

Would I change much? No. More English lessons, for sure. We’recramming to get those in. Having left the environment, I can see all thegood that goes on there. The one thing I would change, or add, would bemore encouragement to students after they leave CIS to come back to HongKong or stay elsewhere in the world and think really seriously about thetype of education they received at CIS—in relation to China, in relation tothe United States, in relation to Europe, and to really think about what itmeant to have that education. The students at CIS are equipped with theresources, financial, intellectual, social, linguistic, to be searingly intelligentcritics of the world we live in today. I would hope that students at CIS leavenot only with their IB diplomas, but also with the sense that they really arelaunching into a world that they can master and change for the better.

Allen taught English at CIS from 2005 to 2008. He is now a graduate studentat Stanford University.

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Vera Lummis ’14According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

I feel like CIS used to do it more in Years 7 to 9. As I’ve gotten older,education on the person as a whole and everything outside of academics hasdisappeared. And our school does really little on activities that involve allyear groups. Outside of the Human Rights group and other student groups,our school needs to have more programs that create curiosity towards othercultures. They try to do this in CHOICES but it doesn’t work. If they wantto do that, they need more speakers. They need to talk more about globalissues in CHOICES. All we do is discussion without our own groups, so wedon’t really get any new ideas from CHOICES. The main thing is that theschool needs to have at least whole-secondary programs and initiatives.


In times like Project Week, the most obvious development comes in. Butagain, our school needs to spend less time in class and give us more free timeto pursue other interests. If you’re very involved co-curricular, you start toget really busy because you have to use all this outside-of-school time to dothese projects and organize those activities. The school should give us timespecifically to do that, maybe one day of the week when we don’t have lastperiod and that’s when all the groups can have their meetings and studentscan talk to teachers. Boarding schools have set times for students to askteachers questions but we don’t here. I think it’s important to have moreimportant outside of CIS come here. It’s getting better, though—there aremore speakers, like Anson Chan and others who come.

In general, I feel like I learn more from my peers than from the school.But I guess that’s natural. Through Year 13s—they’re the ones who inspireyounger people. As in, younger people go to the charity groups Year 13smake, and it sort of follows that path—but maybe not so much from theschool. And I don’t know whether they can do that through teachers orthrough activities.

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The spirit thing has definitely improved. With the celebration of the25th anniversary, the school was suddenly so proud and happy for a littlebit. Also, I feel like Dr Faunce is starting to look at long term goals, andhe’s trying to work towards those goals. In his school circulars, he talksabout CIS in the long term, though maybe some of what he’s doing rightnow doesn’t necessarily point to that. All these new initiatives, like financialaid, are starting to pop up and you can tell that the school is definitely ona path. There are a lot of students who want to participate and help, sothat’s good. It’s grown— I don’t know, though, in terms of the voices ofstudents. I don’t know how student voice has grown. This year’s studentcouncil is doing really well, they’re fostering dialogue between school andstudents more, way more than in the past years, but I don’t know if, interms of the say students have in how the school is run, CIS has grown.

Vera is a Year 11 student at CIS.

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Brian KernAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

I have to say, first of all, that I’ve seen very few schools that really seemto take their mission statement that seriously, in terms of looking to realizeand implement it.

Does this place inspire intellectual curiosity? I like to think it does, inparts. I certainly think certain teachers do, and I certainly think certainstudents do. I don’t find it to be a school that, as a school, does that. Idon’t find it to be a school that really takes ideas very seriously. I think it’sa school that has a great urge to control. And you see this in the publicdiscourse. If you take assemblies, one of the things that surprised me whenI came to CIS was that you have very irregular assemblies, and when youdo, they are invariably to, it’s a ritual, to celebrate Chinese New Year, orthe Holiday season in December. And they’re highly scripted. So the schooldoes very few things that encourage students’, or for that matter faculty’s,intellectual curiosity as an institution.

Another school I worked at had what were called Global Concerns Day,which happened five times a year. Those were days on which there were noclasses, and you focused on a particular global concern, whether it be povertyor activism. I thought those days were good in terms of focusing on a globalconcern, but I thought they were good because they encouraged people todevelop curiosity for things and use their intellect. Often times, classroomactivities can seem somewhat artificial and somewhat divorced from the“real world” out there. I think it’s good for a school as an institution tohave a public discourse where students are doing those sorts of things aspart of the general schedule.

I don’t see how the school is doing this in an intentional way in theclassroom, either. We’ve got this thing called collaborative planning time,which was supposedly started, I understand, to encourage teachers to planand work collaboratively. But the whole thing is prescribed from on high.So time after time after time, we’re given certain things we have to do bythe school and told to do them. I find that soul-deadening. That, to me,would be a perfect space to encourage the intellectual curiosity of teachers.And yet it doesn’t get done. It’s a purely bureaucratic event. If you’re notencouraging the intellectual curiosity of teachers, then what do you expectthem to do in the classroom? Of course, what results is that teachers who areintellectually curious inspire that in students, and teachers who for whateverreason may not be as much tend not to.

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At the end of the day, one of the huge challenges I find this school faces,like any institution of a certain size, it finds that it has administrative andbureaucratic prerogatives. In other words, you’ve got to get things done,you’ve got to make the school run, you’ve got to schedules for the schoolbuses, all that stuff that has to be done. And the problem is those things takeover, and all this stuff about intellectual curiosity becomes de-prioritized.At the end of the day, I think it’s because the school has leaders that don’temphasize those things enough and don’t listen to students and teachersenough when students and teachers take initiative that might help withthat.


What does healthy and holistic development mean? I’m not sure I’ma very good person to ask this question, because I don’t have as muchexperience in these areas at CIS. I can tell you a few things. One is that I’venot been at a school where I have such distant relationships with studentsas I do in CIS. That’s not across the board. I have good relationships withmany students, but I find the relationships here to be more distant. I findstudents probably needing teachers less than they do at other schools, andthinking of teachers less as the sorts of people they would go to with any butacademic problems. I miss a bit of that engagement. I’m not a homeroomteacher, and I’ve never been asked by the school or the pastoral office to givemy input. At my last school, I had a group of ten advisees that I followed.I really enjoyed that, and I found it really effective. The adviser was thego-to person if the advisee had academic problems or other sorts of problemsoutside academics.

When I came here, I was very confused about how the system worked. Ifind that, again, you have homeroom teachers who seem to mostly be usedfor administrative purposes, and find that there’s not the time or culturefor focusing more on the support of people. I don’t think I’ve got a lot ofexperience there, and from my perspective, I’m wondering how successfulthe school is in that area.


Where to begin—I perceive CIS to be a school with a lot of resources,sometimes I think obscenely many resources. The last schools I were atbefore I came to CIS were literally started under mango trees in SouthernSudan. They started even before they had buildings for schools. Quiteoften, the students were involved in constructing the school. I find theincome inequality that you see in Hong Kong that CIS is complicit very

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deeply disturbing. I think it’s part of an unfair society, and in Hong KongI spent a lot of time with people who are on the other end of that incomeinequality, so I see what income inequality for those people. That makesit a little bit difficult to come to CIS every day and see what people herehave. I find it even more difficult because, with so many resources, comes agreat deal of responsibility. I’m not so sure CIS as an institution takes thatresponsibility seriously, and I’m not so sure it helps students here understandwhat that responsibility means. CIS sits up on top of Braemar Hill, and inso many ways I find that symbolic of this school. It’s a school in the clouds,and I find that a pity because it could be so much more than that with theresources that it has.

The other thing is that, not only does it have a lot of resources, but itlacks decision-making processes and structures that are inclusive and allowpeople at CIS to take part in decisions that have to do with how CIS pri-oritizes spending its resources. Coming from the perspective I do to CIS, Ithought I had a lot of things to contribute here, and over my three yearshere I’ve become more and more disappointed that it seems that there’s noway to contribute those things. And for me personally, that’s a bit of abummer. But it also has to do with feeling that a lot of these things arethings that don’t exist at CIS now and would be very useful to the educationhere.

If I could say I have one hope for CIS, it would be that it would develop aculture in which the need for clear decision-making structures was recognizedso that all the great ideas and initiatives here can actually be judged anddiscussed and debated. It has to do with that lack of public discourse I wastalking about. On so few occasions here have I been in meetings with thefaculty where we were really talking about real things and important thingsthat would lead to some kind of conclusion, some kind of decision. In away, what happens is that this school has so much money it just doesn’tknow what to do with it, and it doesn’t allow priorities to be discussed anddebated, and the result is you’ve got very few people making decisions thathave large implications for the school as a whole. And those decisions arenot well considered. Many of them are ones with big capital outlays, and Ithink to myself, it can only be a school that’s so wealthy that doesn’t needto think so much about whether the money it puts on things is being usedwisely and is going to achieve the objectives it sets out to, that would investso much in such programs that were decided by very few people and oftennot even the ones who are the educational experts at the school, which Ithink the faculty are.

At the end of the day, I would expect a school like CIS to be a muchmore vibrant and with-it place than it is. It seems that in many ways, it’squite content with appearances and, as long as it’s churning out studentsyear after year with certain IB grades, it can consider itself successful. Ithink that’s a bit of a pity, among other reasons, because there are a lot

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of great teachers and a lot of great students, and the school doesn’t haveways into tapping into that energy consistently and effectively. It leaves theschool a worse place than it could be.

Brian is an English teacher, and has been at CIS since 2009.

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Kolleen Ku ’12According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Teachers and, certainly, students try themselves to embody this missionstatement. But as always, the school can do more to promote this indepen-dent curiosity by focusing less on grades and more on creativity and trueintellectual engagement.

It’s really up to individual classes and teachers, and the way they’retaught. Also, intellectual engagement is a question that spans beyond schooland into the individual’s interest, so it’s hard to purely judge how the schoolas an entity contributes to that when there are so many factors at play. Forexample, the school is good in that it has so many art resources—the artroom, art curriculum. Just speaking from personal experience, these arepretty excellent. There are always school plays, school musicals, and thefilm lab’s great. These are all successes of this school, particularly in termsof staff, who I know are all really dedicated and engaged.

The establishment of the CIS Writing Center has led to focus on the prob-lems of extra tutoring, in that tutoring often isn’t inspiring but rather likecram sessions of facts and details, even with external copy editing. The Writ-ing Center is great in that it provides peer-to-peer advice and does thingsat a much more fundamental level—like teaching grammar and structurerather than just editing people’s grammar.


One of the most pressing issues that has been recently brought up isthe lack of LGBT programming in our school—additionally, the suppressionof it. This is really sad for a school that such great Pastoral care, wherethere’s so much emphasis is placed on making CHOCIES and Enrichmentwork, when such a huge population of the CIS community is being ignored.That’s a huge failing on the school’s part, and should be remedied as soonas possible.


A lot of new policies have been implemented—some to no avail, like thebag rule. Of course, there’s now a China Center. I’m not really sure how it

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has changed, considering that I had a really different position in this schoolwhen I was in Year 7 as to I do now. I feel personally much more engagednow than I was before. I don’t know if this is a change or just me realizingmore.

But there is definitely a lack of direct routes for students to engage withfaculty and administration. For example, I would certainly like to talk toteachers about the one-to-one laptop program, or academic honesty, or theChina Center, but aside from the Academic Honesty Forum organized bythe Student Council, there haven’t been any official venues to do so. Thisis a big change, in that there are so many policies being implemented butstill no direct method to contribute. I’d like more interaction and directrepresentation for students, and teachers too.


Definitely. The CIS community is great in that we’re all really engagedand passionate about making CIS a better place, which is why there isalready so much discourse. But now I’m sensing a disconnect between con-versations between students and teachers—a disconnect between those kindsof conversation and the higher administration and Board of Governors, whoare ultimately in charge of the big decisions at CIS. To create a more wel-coming and supportive environment, and to create a CIS that everyone isproud to be a part of, are really important—that each and every person atCIS has a say in the running of the school.

Kolleen has been at CIS since 2005, and will soon be attending ColumbiaUniversity.

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Yi-Wei Liu ’11According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

The mission statement is worthy of the aspirations of any top-tier school;it would be difficult to argue that encouraging “intellectual curiosity” and a“lifelong love of learning” is detrimental to students anywhere in any school.I think CIS tries hard to achieve its mission and succeeds in many ways. Theschool’s prestigious reputation, students’ high test scores, and graduates’career successes is objective evidence that CIS is doing something right. AsI hold no expertise in education, I have no specific recommendations to giveto CIS, but I believe the school should continue to look for ways in which itcould better achieve its mission.


I think that any academic institution’s primary focus should always bethe healthy academic development of its students. That said, I think CISsucceeds not only in providing students with an intellectual academic en-vironment, but also in giving them a vibrant community. During my lastyear at CIS, many people argued that CIS didn’t have enough school spiritand pointed to the low attendance of supporters at school sports events.Yet the close connections that remain between the class of 2011 and the CIScommunity as well as the friendships within our graduating class suggest ourfield trips, Project Weeks, inter-house activities and study sessions helpednurture a real sense of community and school spirit.


CIS has been and needs to continue working towards fulfilling its respon-sibility to have public dialogue and honest discourse. A proud school like CIShas nothing to gain from keeping secrets. CIS can work towards these idealsby furthering interaction between the administration, staff and students, byinvolving parents, students and staff in the school’s decision-making.

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As a student of CIS, I found, or pretended to find, many faults withCIS. Only as a graduate can I really appreciate how much it has nurturedme both academically and socially.

Yi-Wei graduated from CIS in 2011, and now studies at Swarthmore College.

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Holly Mak ’07According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

CIS definitely tries to do it, but critical thinking is difficult as thereseems to be a culture of competition and meekness in the student bodythat prevents students from coming out and being the individuals that theyare. This would require a lot of confidence, which is sometimes lacking inour students. Many of them would rather brush things under the carpet.There is a strong motive to do excel in everything, to be the top student.The mission is well-intentioned, but the school does not foster that entirely.However, I notice there is a difference between “my generation” and “yourgeneration”: today’s students seem to be more outspoken and are involvedin a huge range of things. The fact that you guys are writing this book is atestament to how you are distancing yourselves from what is “normal”.


This is a tricky question. I’m completely ambivalent. CIS kids are reallydriven to become “successful”, and expectations from parents and the schoolreinforces this. The school offers a lot of opportunities and CIS kids are well-known to be involved in many things, but real interest and true passion arehard to foster here. Students are more concerned with CVs (communityservice, charity work). I’ve read many personal statement drafts recentlyand they’re impressive, painting images of perfect individuals in terms ofacademics and extra-curricular activities. This risks being generic in personaand identity. Also, a lot of young kids at CIS always look very tired. Theyare so hardworking, sometimes unhealthily so. It can be detrimental whengrades become a measurement of self-worth.


As you know, I’m an alumnus and I graduated in 2007. Four to five yearson, I feel like CIS’s really expanded and developed its name/brand. Teachershave become younger and I suppose I’m a testament to this. It’s exciting.The technology here has changed much, with all these huge screens, MacPCs in the multimedia room, and whatnot. The one-on-one laptop programis another instance of technological change, and I’m again ambivalent about

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it. I recognize that technology is a force to be reckoned with and will beprevalent in many years to come, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to giveit to kids so young when they are at critical ages to develop social skills.It’s certainly hard to navigate that with a laptop sprung on you. I don’tthink students are aware of why they are given these machines. I think thatperhaps students in Years 10-11 should get the laptops first. Just some smalldetails: I’ve noticed that the attention of the Year 7s and 8s I’m teaching isshifting a lot more, which makes critical thinking a challenge. The other dayI was teaching kids to write limericks, and saw a girl type ’find words thatrhyme with “Spain”—exactly what I just asked them to do-into the Googlesearch engine. It’s such an impulsive thing to do to ask for an immediateanswer without thinking first. The results are more important than theprocess of inquiry. This happens on a day-to-day basis and not just in theclassroom, as students use the computer at school and at home day andnight. This is particularly problematic in the study of English, in whichquiet meditation without mediated assistance is key. It’s not like it mustdominate the learning. I often feel a bit uneasy in the classroom as I feellike I’m in a competition with the laptop. Students automatically prefer topay attention to the screens. There is this rabbit hole that leads them towhatever they try to find. I find that nowadays I have to reiterate a lotmore. It’s quite infuriating. I’m also worried about students’ health: theireyesight and posture. But of course, technology is a very useful tool whenused appropriately.

I would like to see more open communication. There is some disconnectbetween teachers and students as well as between teachers and administra-tors. Using the one-on-one laptop as an example again, no extended discus-sion on whether the benefits outweigh the disadvantages were undertaken.More of teachers’ inputs should be included as it affects their day-to-daylife. Openness is lacking, and CIS could definitely improve in this area.Also, in a perfect world there would be less an emphasis on grades andassessments. Students always ask whether they are graded on this task ornot. Kids at their ages are supposed to be boundless in their curiosity, andtoo much focus on grades is stunting that. But I recognize numbers area common language that teachers need to use. I find it troubling that Isometimes think: this student is a 5, and that student is a 6. There shouldbe more emphasis just on learning in the future. One more thing: the wayProject Week is organized. The way students choose which trip to joinseems they are just flipping through a catalogue. I believe many of them goon the trips with an I’m-an-international-school-student- so-I’m-entitled-to-this-opportunity kind of mentality. It’s like privileged individuals visitingplaces of the underprivileged. I think the school could invite more ideas ofstudents to enhance real engagement. This doesn’t mean going to placesmore exotic; it could be just making change in Hong Kong’s local commu-nity.

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There should really be a space or a platform for the voices of students.The Student Council is one such platform, and students are becoming moreproactive these days. More opportunities should also be given to teachersto communicate with the administration. Just meeting once a week for 15minutes, and mostly just for announcements, is not enough. There shouldbe more opportunities to discuss things. We don’t necessarily need to havesolutions, but just an atmosphere of openness so that you know you won’tget into trouble with Big Brother. As a student I just wanted to get on withmy things and get out of CIS. Look where I am now! Now senior studentsare different; they seem to care a lot more.

Holly is a member of the Class of 2007 at CIS. Her passion for literatureled her to pursue a degree in English and Film at King’s College London,and a Masters in Film at the University of Warwick. Since then, she hasreturned to her alma mater to teach. Her favorite memories from her timeat CIS include MC-ing the Christmas concert in Year 2, and dressing up asSailor Moon for the Studio 54 alumni party.

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Martin MatsuiHow has CIS changed since you arrived, and how would you likeit to change in the future?

My first contact with CIS took place ten years ago when I enrolled mydaughter Madeleine in Year 3. That was five years after Hong Kong hadreverted to its motherland. Since that time both CIS and the people of HongKong have changed and my written reflection dwells upon their commonevolution.

We have seen many physical changes in both our school and Hong Kong.New buildings have arisen and the population of city has increased. Thestudents literally have grown.

The aspirations of Hong Kong people have also evolved: their expec-tations about the governance of their city have grown. This weekend willmark the third time a small-circle will pick our next chief executive. Sincethe departure of the British, Hong Kong people to an increasing degree wantto have a say in how their government is selected; they want to know moreabout their Special Administrative Region. At the same time there are in-creasing calls for transparency and there is a belief that the governmentshould be in some way answerable to its citizens.

I think a similar change in mood has taken place in CIS. CIS has be-come a larger institution with more staff, students, and facilities. I thinkpartially in response to these changes as well as the maturation of the ideaof citizenship, parents also want to understand better what is happening toour school and its management.

Now the subject of governance is complicated and, as we have seen in thepast year, controversial. So in this short reflection I propose a much simplerand easier to achieve objective. I would like to see CIS follow best practicesand carry out the recommendation of the Law Review Commission of HongKong on the topic of disclosure2. Let me explain more. Last June the Com-mission issued a consultation report on charities. Their Recommendationstated:

(1) Registered charitable organizations…should be required to filean auditors’ report and financial statements…(3) The auditor’s report and financial statements submitted bycharitable organizations…should be accessible to the public.

So just as the Hong Kong government publishes its detailed financial state-ments and budget, CIS parents would have access to CIS’s financial state-

2The Law Reform Commission of Hong Kong was established in January 1980. TheCommission considers for reform those aspects of the laws of Hong Kong which are referredto it by the Secretary for Justice or the Chief Justice. Members of the Commission areappointed by the Chief Executive of HK SAR.

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ments which for some reason are not available to these interested readers.(Parents of the English Schools Foundation in Hong Kong already haveaccess to this information for their schools.) My own view is that the publi-cation of these statements will eventually become mandatory so CIS couldconform now to accepted best practice for transparency and disclosure. Inshort parents’ standards for CIS have kept pace with the higher expectationswe have set for our Hong Kong society. My proposal would help CIS meetthese rising expectations.

Martin is a CIS parent.

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Glen Morgan 年

According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Any school has a mission statement like that, or a philosophy that theytry to teach by or learn by. However, these types of statements are alwaysvery difficult to live up to. At CIS, we do a pretty good job. We try ourbest, and that’s all we can ever do in trying to meet these things. Often withmission statements, the aim is set high. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’tdo our best to reach that. Because of the curriculum we have, especially inthe MYP where my main teaching is, there’s a fair attempt to help kids todevelop their curiosities and learn in that matter—to solve problems, figurethings out and therefore be aware of other things.

In terms of being international citizens—that’s a tricky one. We can’tmark that or grade that. The proof of that comes after our students leaveschool, in what they are in the world and how they act in the world. Hope-fully, if we treat them fairly, if we show them how to learn and that weenjoy learning ourselves, those values about learning will be infused into thestudent. Maybe the student doesn’t know it at that stage, but when they’re25, or 28, they can fall back onto those strategies that we’ve taught themat school. It’s very hard to measure, and it’s a subjective thing.

CIS has very attentive students in class. They’re very disciplined. Theycome from disciplined families, have had a lot of tutors. They’ve beenpushed from a young age to study really hard. In some ways, that bluntsintellectual curiosity. There’s a great value placed on achievement— thatmeans results, and that means learning certain information in a certaintimeframe. Creativity is sometimes blunted in those situations. It’s a risk.As a parent or a teacher, we have to be more trusting that results don’tmean everything. If we allow students to be bored, for instance, at differenttimes of their lives, they will actually find activities to find in their own livesand make up games. It’s that creativity—and the boredom, actually, thatstimulates that ability to be creative. If we teach constantly about content,then we’re too result-based.


CIS succeeds fairly well here, but we do have a big risk. We’re veryachievement-based, we want kids to get in the best universities, so we some-times run a fine line with the holistic development. I would like to see a lot

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more kids involved in the Hong Kong Award for Young People and otheractivities like that. But often, students aren’t able to participate at a higherlevel because their parents don’t want them to be missing school or academicwork. That’s what I mentioned earlier— having a little more trust, that ifstudents are out gaining a more holistic education, they will succeed in thelong run. It’s a matter of trust.


It has changed a little bit in that we’re moving towards a philosophyof sending Year 10 kids to China for a year. It’s an interesting educationalconcept. It’s not a new concept, but it has incredible potential to changekids’ lives and to provide them with an experience for a more holistic educa-tion. That’s a really big change on our horizon. Schools always change veryslowly. That’s to be expected. Rapid change can sometimes cause problems.

I’d like CIS to continue to try and do the little things that a school doeswell a little bit better. CIS is a very special school with a lot of kids witha lot of talent. Sometimes, because of that and also because we have a lotof special teachers as well, I’d like to see us focus more on normal, ordinary,hard-working teachers and hard-working students. That will show value inthem—they’re the people, particularly the teachers, who make a school run.They’re prepared to do the jobs that are not so popular. They are goodschool people—they like hanging around kids, they like being with kids,they like taking kids on excursions, and they like kids in general. We cantry to focus on employing people who are those kinds of people rather thannecessarily special people. Special people may be able to do special jobs,and have special talents, but sometimes they might not want to do morenormal school things. We should be careful with that.

And then I’d like to see us keep going with a push to try and maintaina holistic school. I’d like to see a greater emphasis on HKAYP and supportthat more. I’d like to see us educate the parents more, in terms of gettinginvolved with CISPTA, getting them to be more aware of the risks of livingin Hong Kong—over-tutoring, over-homework-ing, over-sheet-working thewhole time, which dull the creativity in kids. We could do some work there.We could recruit with a focus in mind for good school people, as I’ve said.I’d like to see us start offering scholarships to kids who may be academicallybright but otherwise wouldn’t be able to have access to an education likeours.

Here’s a wild idea—we send lots of kids overseas on Project Week, butI think we’ve missed the boat a little bit. There’s a lot of stuff in HongKong that we don’t focus on. There’s huge need here, and we often focuson our own needs. I’d like to see us working on those local issues. We couldactually send teachers to schools that need help and pay the wage. Maybe

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we could send one teacher every year to a foreign school that’s really poor.We could pay their wage to be at that other school.


I’d like to see us build community within the staff. There’s so muchpressure from the top-down to do special things and to do extra jobs thatthe staff feel like they’re on a treadmill. They therefore become less engagedand communicative within themselves, and therefore I don’t think they teachas well. I’d like to see us try to build that more, because it would impactthe students. I’d like to see us try to encourage the students to focus noton their own needs but on other people’s needs. For instance, instead ofexpecting people to respect us because of something about me, I should justtreat everyone with respect.

For instance, we could go on a CIS picnic—students and staff together.We have a day off school and we go on a picnic. The community buildingthat we do comes from Project Week and camps. I really love those, andthat’s part of the reason why I chose CIS. I tried to start up a Project Weekthing at my school in Australia, and we couldn’t. When I was looking atinternational schools and I saw Project Week and camp week, I saw a schoolthat valued those things. When I say I’d like us to focus on local issues aswell, I still support fully the idea of going away for a week. Maybe we couldhave another week when we just work for people in Hong Kong. One of therisks we have is that mostly our demographic is from very rich families orvery academic families. We don’t have a lot of exposure to normal people.A lot of our kids come from cars with drivers. A lot of our kids have neverbeen to a public housing estate. They don’t have friends who live there.They don’t understand that 60% of Hong Kong lives in public housing, yetwe’re the 1% at the top. When we run around school getting all upset thatsomeone doesn’t respect us, it’s sort of hypocritical. I don’t know how weteach that. It’s a value—that’s the part that I’m grappling with myself.Our students are quite naive in some regards. It’s good to be naive, but it’salso good to not, because of the naiveness, treat everyone else as lower class.Everybody’s equal, and because of our helpers and aunties doing everythingfor us, we’ve got people who don’t know how to sweep up, how to buttertheir bread, how to peel their oranges because they’ve never had to. Theyhave a different life experience, and that experience can sometimes be selfish.

Glen is a Design Technology teacher and the Head of Year 7, and has beenat CIS since 2007.

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Francis Newman ’14According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

It certainly tries to do this. In many classes, it succeeds to a certainlevel. But there is certainly space for improvement. CIS can continue toinspire this love of learning that it’s supposed to inspire. Particularly withthis part of the mission statement, it needs to encourage students more. Itneeds to encourage them to work and do better than they’ve done before.

To give one example, the Personal Project does help—CIS does wellin the PP. It really encourages students to do something they enjoy doing,something that they really want to do. This helps to inspire love of learning.But, for example, they could try to make it more focused to a particularsubject. So we don’t just specify on one detail, but look at the area aroundwhat we’re interested in. This would help to inspire a growth of learning.


It succeeds. It’s a very diverse place, with lots of different opinions,both from the student body and from the teachers. It really makes for awelcoming place. When I came in Year 7, there was never any time when Ifelt particularly lonely or unhappy. It’s an environment where people withdifferent ideas, who have come from different backgrounds, are welcomed.One thing it could work on in this area is—although we have a diverserange of students and teachers—making it even broader. Particularly withdifferent backgrounds—not just countries, but places within countries. Itcould also foster more of an enthusiastic attitude to learning more aboutother places—and indeed, about the places you come from.


CIS has changed in terms of some of the details. There are many teacherswho have left and many new ones who have come. Some of whom are doinga very good job, and some who aren’t as good as their predecessors. Onthe whole, it’s been growing well. The sense of community has continuedto grow—the CIS community is very close-knit. People from within thecommunity really need to, when they change, change with the group. And I

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think the group is changing. The CIS community generally changes for thebetter.

CIS has changed in details, but overall as a school, it hasn’t changeddramatically. The mission statement and the way in which classes are heldhasn’t changed—and that’s quite good.

In the future, CIS needs to just continue improving generally. There areno individual areas which are drastically bad. Having said that, we do needto work on languages. Chinese need to be taught in a more student-inclusiveand useful way, so that the language can actually be used—when people gooff to the China Experience Program, or the China Center later. Therearen’t really any other changes that need to be made, but just general andgradual improvement.


There is quite a lot of dialogue between teachers and students. Onearea that does need to be worked on is with younger students. There isa big difference between the bottom end of the secondary school and theolder students. There needs to be more dialogue between the older studentsand younger students, and a more fluid transition coming from the youngerinto the older years. Between teachers and students, it’s quite fluid. We’regenerally quite transparent. We need to make sure this is always true,because it’s not always the case. But on the whole, we’re doing quite wellon that.


One very important thing is development through the years. It’s veryimportant to remember not to treat each year as a different step. Sometimes,Year 7s to 9s, Year 10s and 11s, and Year 12s and 13s are kind of separated.There needs to be an easier transition. We need to make the younger yearsmore included in what the top end of the school does. It’s difficult, that issue,because generally speaking the older students are better at leading eitherafter school activities or in the classroom. But what might help would bemore leadership opportunities for younger students—more events where theyounger students show off what they’ve done to the older students, not justthe other way around. As long as the older students respond positively,which I expect they would, then that could be accomplished.

Francis is a Year 11 student at CIS.

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Kevin QuinnAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Probably the only way I could think about this question is locally— thatis to say, within classrooms. I would want to suggest that I am sure thiskind of environment is fostered on a school-wide level, but I can’t honestlysay that there is any demonstrable existence of ways that CIS wants tofoster that kind of environment beyond putting it in its mission statement.That’s not to suggest that CIS is not doing that on a larger scale, but theonly way I can answer that question is to think about it locally. Certainteachers, certainly, and probably the majority of our teachers, because theyare teachers, know that it’s philosophically and morally what it means tobe a teacher, is that whatever your discipline, you have to also rememberthat it extends beyond just the subject that you’re teaching, and in fact hasto do with what your students take away philosophically from the subjectsthey study. Exposure, for example, to certain kinds of problems—whetherthey’re problems raised in literature, in scenarios you can get in economics,what we study in history and the way we study it, problems in languagethat we might study in Chinese, all of those things play a role in how wecan foster a kind of lifelong learning desire in students.

I have to say, again, that though it shouldn’t be, my experience at leasthas been that that is fostered much more on a local level at CIS.


That seems to be the goal at large. I wouldn’t suggest that CIS is failingin that, but I do think there are some formidable impediments to reachingthat goal. For example, even changing the academic environment so thatit’s not so focused on numbers is a huge thing to be done with regards tonurturing an education environment which is academic, which is not to sayperformative or based on bottom-line results. If you want people to lovelearning for learning’s sake, and for the inevitable salutary effects it hason your personhood, then you can’t be obsessed with what a collection ofnumbers means to a student. I’ve spoken to several teachers about this—forexample, the MYP doesn’t have any space in it for anything other than thefinal product. Things like quality of contribution to a classroom discussion,and effort, and involvement, and enthusiasm for the subject, are things whichI don’t think are negligible and yet the MYP, despite much of its grandiose

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verbiage about its commitment to lifelong learning. If you evaluate studentssolely on bottom-line products, that’s a conflict, philosophically, with theethos that you are espousing. There are ways that CIS logistically could abetthis kind of thing rather than just fall in line with the prevailing concernsabout what numbers kids are getting. Some of that is due to ways thatparents feel about this. They’re small things. What if we didn’t publishnumbers in this way? What if we got rid of numbers until the DP program?What if we allowed students more choices within the DP program to be theextent that it is possible?

We have to model, as teachers and administrators, this behavior forstudents. We can’t, for example, be afraid of students who think freelyand openly and elastically about issues, even when we disagree with them.Because that’s part of the educational process. You don’t learn to thinkby having everyone either agree with you or shutting down because theydisagree with you. We can model how we learn to think creatively andcomprehensively and critically by allowing for those kinds of opportunities,giving kids more responsibilities, in which they have to use their thinkingto drive outcomes. All of that, I think, contributes to these environmentswhich we say we want. But I’m not sure we always put our money whereour mouth is.


We have very much so a lot of work to do in that regard. I can’t bepresumptuous and try to speak about what people’s frames of minds are,but I can respond to behavior that I see, which suggests to me sometimesthat there is a paranoiac fear of open thought, for whatever reason. I don’treally quite understand it. Maybe the fear that hearing too many voicesis an impediment to getting what you want done, which actually I thinklogically is not true. People fall in line with decisions much more willinglywhen they feel like they’ve been heard. It’s much easier you don’t agree withas long as you’ve had the chance to express what it is that you think aboutit. That’s a major area, and frankly, something that runs from the staff tothe students. It’s interesting, as an American, because I was told about CISbefore I came here that it was the best school in Hong Kong, and that it wasa very worldly urbane sort of place, and certainly I’m used to that. But therehave been several frightening moments in which the school, if not run, but isoften finds itself operating, is frightening similar to what I would expect inMainland China—that kind of anxiety over a multiplicity of voices, a knee-jerk reaction to commotion and to unsettlement and disagreement. Criticalthinking inspires in you a willingness to hear people who disagree with you.I actually sort of enjoy that. What it should do for you is make you either

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reconsider what you’re thinking or have something more developed to sayin response to disagreement. But your first response should never be “Thisis what we think, we don’t want anybody, so therefore don’t talk to meabout it.” That’s juvenile, to put it plainly. Educational institutions havea responsibility not to be that way. As it relates to CIS, there’s a lot to bedeveloped.

I’m not a student, so I can’t speak for students. But I do know studentswhom I talk to a lot, who echo the same sort of sentiment. I’m always reallyimpressed by our students when they collectively start talking about issuesthat are important to our school. That’s something we should be proud of,rather than be suspicious of.

How has CIS changed since you arrived?

I had ideas about how the place would work upon arriving here. I willsay that it’s not what I expected. There have, though, been moments whereI think, with students, that there have been more opportunities for studentsto share their opinions on a number of issues. But it’s beyond just creatinga space for people to talk. It’s really more about what you do once peoplehave spoken. There’s a way that you can pander to anybody’s need toshare their opinions by simply letting people speak, but if you don’t activelyengage with what they’ve said, it’s kind of insulting. It’s like “Now they’vegotten to say something, now we can move on.” I don’t know if I see anyimprovements markedly in that aspect.


My main feeling about this place has to do with the fact that I don’t thinkCIS is capitalizing on the immense opportunities it has to really be a leader,certainly in the East, in Asia, in China. To really stand out, and really beinnovative and be on the forefront, this school doesn’t have to run peoplemight expect it to. I try, for example, to have my classes to be like that,and I feel like it would be a very different place if students felt enfranchisedlike that all the time in that way, and if our staff felt enfranchised in thatway all the time.

Kevin joined the CIS English department in 2010 having come from a ratherbohemian life in New York and still hasn’t gotten used to the humidity.Nevertheless, he is still quite happy in Hong Kong. When not eating poutinein LKF, he is most happy reading and writing.

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Su-Mei ThompsonAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Overall, CIS does a good job of encouraging intellectual curiosity and in-dependent, critical and creative thinking. Prominent recent manifestationsof this include last term’s Year 2 project celebrating festivals from aroundthe world to Mr Comer’s inspired and inspiring Primary poetry drive. TheYear 2 project required each student to select, research and present on thehistorical, religious and cultural significance of an international festival. Byall accounts, the projects were thoughtfully and thoroughly researched, theaccompanying materials were colorful and creative, and the bilingual pre-sentations were confident and motivated by a generous spirit of peer to peerknowledge transfer.

In addition, I was privileged to be an advisor to the Year 13 organizersof TEDxYouth@CIS in December which saw parents, teachers and mostlystudents come together and deliver a series of inspiring monologues on Tech-nology, Entertainment and Design and ideas worth sharing. The event wasa moving celebration of determined leadership on the part of the organizers(Year 13’s Denise Wong and Ben Chasnov), individual courage on the partof the presenters, tremendous teamwork on the part of the production vol-unteers, and generous appreciation by the enthusiastic audience of parents,teachers, siblings and fellow students.


While CIS’s sports and performing arts facilities could be further en-hanced, I really commend the school for its efforts to celebrate individualand group achievements in music and sports.

From the thrilling spectacle of Primary Sports Day to excellent schoolproductions like Balzac and The Little Seamstress to The Emperor’s Nightin-gale, CIS scores highly in terms of setting a high bar for non-academic aswell as academic achievements. Both Balzac and The Emperor’s Nightin-gale were impressive in their presentation of hard hitting themes to do withcensorship, loss of freedom, materialism, human frailty and death. Sepa-rately, the School’s excellent Learn to Swim program has helped both ourdaughters metamorphose from stubborn landlubbers to confident and happyswimmers.

In addition, CISPTA has been trying to do its part with a revamped

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Speaker Events series that over the last 18 months has invited outspokencommentators like Emily Al and Anson Chan to speak to CIS parents, teach-ers and students on democracy and governance in HK.


We have only been part of the School for the last three years. In thattime, there have been at least two very striking developments:

• The successful launch of the Annual Fund and the IT enabled learn-ing it has facilitated especially for primary. As a non-native speakingMandarin family, we really appreciate the recent emphasis on self-motivated Chinese learning through a dazzling array of online plat-forms like Quizlet, Pleco and Soundcloud.

• The development of the School’s plans for the CCC: Love it or hateit, the CCC is an innovative feature which further burnishes CIS’scredentials as a pioneering institution for bilingual learning.


• The CIS Annual Fair is a beacon of the wonderful things we can achievewe all pull together as a community.

• CIS has more potential to leverage the parent cohort for real worldexpertise and selfless service.

Su-Mei is a CIS parent.

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Darren Tong ’16According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

Certainly, CIS devotes a lot of resources in the name of achieving thisgoal. We have the Annual Fund, that’s been allocated to many such ar-eas as teaching excellence and technology, particularly the one-to-one pro-gram. Whether it has achieved to inspire students to a lifelong love oflearning—that’s another story.

CIS really needs to focus on building the relationship between gradesand the actual work they do. Sometimes, according to IB rubrics, thingsare marked very much according to the rubric. Some who have put a lotof effort, or who actually understand the rubric but didn’t follow the rubricletter-to-letter, do not achieve very high. There needs to be more flexibilitywhen it comes to grading. This way, students can be inspired to think andlearn more, rather than just think about technicalities and achieve grades.Teachers should be allowed to give students personal assessments ratherthan following strict rubric. This is what CIS could do to inspire lifelonglearning besides spending lots of money on laptops and other things.


If you look at the different programs set in place by the school, likeCHOICES, enrichment and homeroom teacher support, they aim to informstudents on social choices, health choices and personal choices. On whetherit’s being successful. In my experiences, CHOICES has not really beensuccessful. Beyond LEAP coming in and intimidating us with facts, andnot really reaching out to the core of the issue or the hearts of the students,the impression students have gotten from CHOICES don’t greatly have anaffect. They’re just fun to mess around in.

It becomes desensitization, I think. Once you have too much of it, notmuch happens on enforcement level or a personal level, when teachers talk tostudents face-to-face on incidents like disciplinary procedures, for example.Without this to back it up and just excessive CHOICES sessions, it becomesless effective. There should be less CHOICES sessions and more focus onbuilding the teacher-student relationship. Teachers should not just academicteachers and punishers, but someone who actually helps students and notcreate a culture of students versus teachers. There are a lot of things that canbe done to improve this. Teachers can first of all not shout at students while

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they scold them. Disciplinary procedures is a large factor. Not necessarilythe written procedures, though I’m not sure if they’ve written anythingdown. It’s the character of the current administration, the character ofthe current teachers that collaborate to create a hostile environment. Ifsomebody is in trouble, they pull you out of class, they divide you fromother people who were accused of the same thing. The impression you get isthat the purpose of any disciplinary procedure is like that of a prosecutor,but that’s not how it should be the case, the teacher should be there to helpthe student, I’ve experienced this myself in many cases. They actually usetactics with intent to draw out more information or deliberately cause us tocreate inconsistencies. This isn’t a very good approach, and it distances usfrom the teachers.

If you think about it, I’m sure there must be some sort of guidelines asto which rules to follow. But either these are so vague that they don’t evenhelp, or they’re not followed at all. The students don’t know what to expect,because different teachers have different sets of rules, because they define itthemselves. A lot could be done to make sure it’s more uniform. Whetherit’s to clarify the rules, or even a better approach, to have teachers not togo their own way and intentionally create a hostile environment.


I arrived in Year 5. I haven’t been here long enough to see any long-termchange, which we would typically see in changes in teachers and administra-tion. Most of my years have been spent under the current administration.What I feel personally is a turn for the worse. I’m not sure about the cul-ture previously, but when I entered secondary school, it was less of a hostileenvironment than it is now. Over the past three years, there have beenpersonal dislike for the administration, and sometimes some people in thePastoral office, because certain incidents and blunders that continue to showstudents that teachers have a disconnection with the students or aren’t in-tending to help them. If I draw a specific incident, the bag rule, there wasno sense of trust, the administration just blitzed it on the students anddidn’t consult the student council, which it was obligated to consult. Therespect for the rules and principles that students have, and the respect forthem as human beings who actually do have good ideas has not been shownin this administration. It’s generally been, “oh, we know it’s not popular,but we know what’s best for you.” I think it’s not a very good approach.They should build a stronger administration-student and teacher-studentrelationship. So, as a change, it has gone for the worse, though I’m not surewhat happened in previous years.

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As a concluding comment, what kind of change I’d like to see: notnecessarily a change of personnel, that would enforce the idea of studentsversus teachers. If the current people in the administration want to remaincredible and respected by students, they need to take their views seriously.When they make a rule, they stick by it: they don’t enforce it when it’s justconvenient to them, or when it’s deemed appropriate. The administrationshould build up that sense of relationship and trust.

Darren is a Year 9 student at CIS.

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Denis Tse ’15According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

CIS does try to inspire students to a lifelong love of learning. But thepressure put on students, mostly by parents, repels this aim. Because par-ents put too much pressure on students to get good grades, the students nolonger learn for knowledge but for getting high marks on test. Once schoolis over and there are no more tests and scores to provide motivation, stu-dents will no longer want to learn anymore, because they have always justbeen learning for the sake of marks. But CIS does encourage intellectualcuriosity. For example, in English class, my teacher does not give me anofficial interpretation of a book or poem, but encourages us to participate inclass debate. He tries to support every one of us, even if our interpretationsare different from his. Yet, in History, one of my teachers reminds me ofsome parents, because he only teaches what the test’s going to be on. Whenone of my classmates asked a question, he did not reply because, “you don’tneed to know that, it’s not going to be on the test”.


CIS nurtures students socially with a wide range of co-curricular activi-ties, such as rugby, football, orchestra and the Human Rights group. Thisis very good for the social life of students, because they get to meet studentsoutside of class. This broadens their exposure and also develops the studentholistically. These activities not only nurture them academically but alsohelp bring out other interests of the students’.

CHOICES and homeroom sessions are a bit limited. They only teach usthree or four topics per year, and it all repeats. I think I’ve only learnedabout anger management, stress management and eating disorders, butthere is much more that we can learn about, and I think we can makemuch better use of this time.


There was the timetabling change, but I don’t really mind about that.There was the bag rule, which I think was quite nonsensical, because there’sno point not being able to carry your bag into the classroom. In the future,

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I’d like CIS to be more flexible in their uniform policy, or perhaps give strongreasons why there is a uniform policy, because when I asked my teacher whyI have to wear proper uniform, my teacher did not give me any reason andsimply said “it’s school rules”. The school has to justify the uniform policyin order for students to accept it.


CIS has a very good atmosphere compared to other international schoolsin Hong Kong. There are no bullies at CIS. Most students are friendlyand nice, and most of them have an underlying love for knowledge. Theyalso aren’t too focused on academics—most of them—so that’s a good partof CIS. But there are some areas of improvement for CIS. For example,the timetable should be more flexible. The students should get to havemore say in what classes they take. I don’t think Computer Technology orDesign Technology should be mandatory in Year 10. Perhaps they should beelectives. Maybe some other subjects such as World Issues and Philosophyshould be introduced into the school curriculum.

Denis is a Year 10 student at CIS.

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Nico Vallone ’16According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

CIS definitely is one of the more dedicated schools. We can all see otherschools where students aren’t actually learning anything, where they openlydisrespect any school policy. I can say that CIS is definitely one-up on thoseschools in this way.

Encouraging curiosity and critical thinking is something that’s very hardto do. It requires a more in-depth view of the mind. The MYP is doingthat pretty well. We’re genuinely interested in the things we’re learningabout—it’s not just some random stuff that has no relevance to us. InHistory, for example, we don’t study topics that don’t affect us. We don’tstudy the American Revolution as much as we do the Chinese Mandate ofHeaven. It’s relevant and lets us relate to it better.

It may just be my personal mentality, but I do like to learn a lot. Ihave a list of encyclopedias in my room that I read to get myself to sleepat night. I can’t provide an unbiased view on this. But by exposing us to alot of things that make us curious and independent, CIS does help us loveto learn.


The school is a very good, and I like it a lot. It nurtures us well academ-ically. But on a social level, I have a few qualms. Every school has disci-plinary procedures when things go wrong and someone needs to be punished.CIS has a little bit of a bad track record with this. It’s mainly because ofwhat I think is the very vague wording of the Honor Code. Let me readit to you: “As a member of the Chinese International School community, Icommit to act with honesty, responsibility and integrity at all times. I haveread the CIS academic honesty policy and I understand the consequences ofdishonest conduct. I take full responsibility for all my actions in this regard.I pledge to uphold this Honor Code in my life inside and outside the school.”What we can see immediately is that it’s very vague. The boundaries be-tween honorable and dishonorable are not incredibly clear-cut. They’re hardto understand. There’s no fine line that you have to be on one side or theother of. It’s an ineffective way of dealing with the academic honesty situa-tion. By requiring students to sign before every single assessment, it beginsto lose its specialness. Although it’s a safety net, it just becomes less and

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less of something we respect, and more of something that we just sign anddon’t understand.

I have a few more concerns. The use of the words “responsibility” and“integrity” is inappropriate in this context. The problem is with the po-tential abuse. Teachers control the interpretation of these words. Oneteacher’s definition might differ extremely with another teacher’s interpre-tation. There will most likely be a lot of unintentional abuse of this rulebecause it’s just so vague. The teachers are using it to force values thatthey deem “responsible” on students. However, this is a minor point. Idon’t think it’s really happening at CIS.

Another part is intentional abuse, which involves staff members delib-erately manipulating the Mission Statement to suit their own needs. It’ssomething to watch out for. Making it more explicit and clear-cut wouldbe a very large improvement in this aspect. I know a friend called Darren.He was on the Friday Morning News team when there was a big contro-versy over that—basically, he came up to me one day and said that there’sthis gigantic problem surrounding the broadcast of the Gaddafi footage andthe Yue Yue footage, both of which were somewhat violent and disturbing.But they put a disclaimer in front of them. After putting this up, therewere a few complaints from Year 7s to Mr Alexander. He came over to theFriday Morning News team with Mrs Rossiter, and said a bunch of state-ments, probably through anger and not thought out as much as would beideal—statements such as “it violated the mission statement”, “the footagethey had shown was not in normal use”, “the Friday Morning News teamswas not working very hard”, “by including a clip of Gaddafi’s death andthe NTC’s celebration they were glorifying death”. There were other accu-sations like these that weren’t entirely thought out or reasoned. The FridayMorning News team had to write out a reflection that they had to handin to the secondary office. What we saw here was an intentional abuse ofthe Mission Statement. Someone saw something they didn’t like, they in-terpreted as “not acting with responsibility or integrity”, and in turn thesepeople who didn’t really do anything wrong had to have a hard-copy notein their folders. The Friday Morning News team tried to refute all this andget themselves out of the mud. It was a really long process, but what wouldhave been a lot better is if the Statement was much clearer with less grayareas than there are now.


I joined in Year 4 from California. I didn’t really see much change fromYear 4 to Year 6, mainly because it was a long time ago and it’s hazy rightnow. But I have seen a lot of improvements in the curriculum. I tend to learna lot more, to be more curious in the later years. I wasn’t as interested in

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Year 4 to Year 6. This may the school’s doing or just my own development.In Year 7, 8 and 9, we did see a lot of changes in school policy. Therewere a few new policies put in, like the bag rule and the Acceptable Usageof Laptops policy. All of these things came off a well-meaning ideal—toimprove the CIS academic life and to help us learn. These are well-initiatedand they do help us learn, but I do think that there’s a need for greatertransparency. If something major has to be changed, the entire school shouldbe consulted so they know exactly what’s going on and make suggestions toit.


CIS is a very nice school. I’m very happy to be here. The problems whichI talked about are large problems, but I’m glad that CIS has managed toovercome many of the problems faced by other schools right now. They’remanaging to take the initiative and launch new programs, such as the one-to-one laptop program. The laptop program is very nice. It kind of workswith the bag rule, if you know what I mean. A lot of the stuff we have tocarry to class are large heavy textbooks or binders or color pencils—thingsthat could be done away with if the laptop program was put in place. Thelaptops reduce the need for textbooks and for binders. The only time whenwe need to be really physical would be in subjects like Art or Math, inwhich it’s hard to write down all the notation on a word processor. Thelaptop program gives us with a versatile platform with a variety of differentapplications for almost all of our classes. It reduces the general weight of ourbags—but right now, because it hasn’t really been implemented, the laptopis just another thing that we have to carry around. The documents insideour bags aren’t as heavy as the laptop.

Nico is a Year 9 student at CIS.

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Claire YeoAccording to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

I love the idealism of that statement. It’s exactly why I’m a teacher.What is a school? It’s people. How would it do this? By having amazing,interesting, passionate, unusual people who are teaching. The crucial successof the missions statement depends absolutely on the teachers in an individualand possibly eccentric way. You need diverse teachers, but also uniformityin only one sense—excellence. Total intellectual and individual excellence.

I’m looking around right now at the people I work with daily. I walkinto that room every morning and I marvel at these amazing people aroundme. I’ve never worked with such an amazing department. Just like BrianMulcahy’s play—the way he inspires kids with creativity, whimsy and indi-viduality. It shocks me. Every time I speak with all my colleagues, I’m like“my god, they’re so good and interesting”.

It’s so difficult to assess an institution save through its individuals. Ican start with me. A teacher’s present and crucial role is modeling behaviorand an approach. I would hope that I try to inspire people by getting themto feel as passionately as I do about the significance of literature, aboutideas, about rigorous and critical questioning, about fearlessness, about thenecessity never to self-censor and not to censor other people. Hopefully,a school as an institution does not drive but follows in the wake of theteachers and the students. In order to be great, a school has to someone orpeople “running it”. A great school runs itself, through the passion of thestudents and teachers. The institution has to ask itself—how can I help thathappen? You’ve got this great idea—how can I help? It’s not to obscure,not to conceal, not to take credit. It’s to enable silently.


A school should offer opportunity and space. Again, Brian Mulcahy’splays and Brian Kern’s Human Rights Group are enabling, structurally andpersonally. These enable student power and develop opinions and exploreaspects of students’ personalities. The school has transformed with theHuman Rights Group and even the CIS Writing Center. I look around hereand just see so many examples—Mr Phan has enabled a whole group ofstudents to teach each other. You can’t be egotistical. You’ve really got to beso humble before other people. As a teacher, you’ve got to give everyone else

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the credit and be generous and expansive. It’s not always possible. But it’sreally noble and beautiful thing—to enable other people—and it gives greatenergy. The students have a lot of opportunities—set up stuff, get moneyfor it and the freedom to dictate their weeks. With LGBT week—while Idon’t think it should be as controversial as it is, they’ve found a way ofnegotiating. It’s so energized and really gives you hope.


I arrived here eight or nine years ago. The students are a lot more politi-cized. That’s so important in Hong Kong especially—look at our elections.The kids are a lot more engaged and demanding and cognizant of rights, asthey should be—not just passive, but actively questioning and expressing.This is vigorous and profitable in terms of development, personally, sociallyand intellectually. This has coincided with the advent of the Human RightsGroup, which I do see as a moment in history made possible. I look atmy Year 12s and 13s—I’ve always loved how the students are so thoughtfuland inspiring for me—and just hearing the level of discussion and analy-sis, and self-criticism and criticism of the world around them, they’re moredemanding about the world they live in.

Women’s day—how extraordinary! It’s like this never existed in HongKong. I loved seeing this suddenly, as a huge feminist. I’m like “oh my god,I haven’t even thought about this for years”. Seeing these kids provokes andreminds me that these days come up. They want to live in a space that’sfull of debate and criticism and difficult questions—and they actually createthat space. I was shocked when I first got here. My Year 13s really couldn’tcare less about the politics here. I was devastated. That’s really changingas the Hong Kong situation becomes more intolerable, also reflecting a localgroundswell.


I keep saying to all my friends, “I cannot leave this place”. I love mycolleagues so much. What is it about our students that they always sayyes? You ask them to do something, to think about something, and theyalways will. That is so precious—CIS should just stop and say “we havethese amazing students and hopefully, amazing teachers”, and be proudof that. And always refer back to the teachers and students when we’replanning things. The school needs to be self-effacing and focus on teachersand students and their energy. That’s the engine, not the trappings.

Claire is an English teacher, and has been at CIS since 2002.

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Bok Wai Yeung ’13According to its mission statement, CIS “encourages intellectualcuriosity and independent, critical and creative thinking”, seekingto “inspire students to a lifelong love of learning”. What do youthink about this statement? Does CIS do this? How does it, andhow does it not?

The CIS mission statement, for me, is really nothing more than a sign infront of the school gates and in the rooms. I feel that the actions of the schoolso far do not really reflect the mission statement. I see in the Human RightsGroup and the Student Council many initiatives which I feel appropriate forour school setting really being shot down for whatever concerns the schoolmight have. When it comes to academics, CIS approaches it well. CISstudents do really well in their subjects, and do foster learning, especiallyin the Diploma Program, when we select our courses. However, in terms ofstudent-led initiatives, the school has yet to improve in this sector.


I’ll define this as the development of one’s integrity, perhaps—morals anddecisions based on how one feels. We have a CHOICES program towards avery linear path in terms of progression on their choices in many differentareas such as bullying and so on. In terms of developing the self in a holisticmanner, the school lacks in that—it’s really doing things by the book. Onlyissues inside the CHOICES curriculum are dealt with. Outside of academics,students are often just left alone. They interact with one another withoutteacher intervention.

The school also has an approach—they only act on issues when studentsreport them, rather than actively trying to find out what’s wrong. I seethat, sure, you talk about anti-bullying, you talk about respect, and so on.However, unless these issues are actually reported, the school doesn’t reallydo anything about them. If there is a taboo or overwhelming culture inwhich certain individuals in a year group are isolated, the school will notreally act on this. They will just sideline it and observe the issue. Theschool should be actively encouraging and supporting students, but at thesame time also allow a certain responsibility on the students’ part.

When it comes to many of the school’s messages, in terms of how oneshould feel or one should act, it has to work towards a more active role incultivating students.

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I first came to CIS in Year 7, and it was because my previous schooldidn’t really offer what we viewed as a credible secondary curriculum. WhenI first came in, it was a huge cultural shift—in the sense that students herewere more relaxed. Their lunches were one hour long. There’s a lot moreroom for socializing and being with other people here, and for me that’s ahuge shift. But comparing now to what the school was like before, I haveto say that much hasn’t changed physically, in terms of facilities. However,in terms of mantra, there’s a change in the attitude students have towardsthe school. That’s the biggest change so far. Maybe it was because I wasyounger, and I didn’t really understand the overarching issues of studentand teacher leadership, or the Board of Governors. As I’ve progressed,I feel that students seem to have a much better understanding of what’sgoing on in the school and the changes being made—in policy, for example.Students are a lot more aware of the happenings in our school, and that’sa positive change as students should be actively participating inside ourschool’s decision-making and be in the loop about what’s going on.

CIS should develop a more student-based approach, instead of teachersjust talking in front of a whiteboard, for example. Teachers should activelytry to suit the students’ needs in a classroom setting. Students should also beactively engaged in their learning. A weakness of teachers sometimes—andthis is very hard to do—is a lack of encouragement to students to work hardon a subject. In the MYP program, it’s much more easy to get put off asubject at a very young age. And after the MYP stage, just never touch itagain. Students may leave school with a very bad understanding of whatthe subject really is. A great example is CT, which has a really bad imagein my year. In Year 7 we learned word processing and spreadsheets—weonly realize later that CT is nothing like that. But the damage is alreadydone. And the people steer off the subject entirely—because they’re afraid,and because they think it’s a waste of time. In cultivating student interest,that’s a huge issue. Teachers shouldn’t be afraid to show students what thesubject relay is past the curriculum, to interest students so they will alsogive it a try. If a student isn’t motivated, it’s not surprising if they sit inclass and not participate at all.

Another thing, in terms of school rules—the school should actively un-derstand and base their policies on the needs of the students, rather than justcoming in with something new and just implementing it. Students should beconsulted. The student body consists of around a thousand students. Sincethey are really affected by these rules and policy changes, they should be inthe loop regarding how decisions are made. That needs to change. Thereshould be a more tolerant behavior towards discussion these with students.The administration should not be afraid. The generation today is a lot more

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liberal and understanding. The school should, instead of just setting thingsin stone, always ask students and discuss with them. The heavy sentimentover the past few years result from forced decisions being made.


CIS as a whole is a really great experience. I don’t mean great as in justsomething you see on a reflection. For me, it’s been a really eye-openingexperience, simply because the people I meet here are really culturally di-verse. Even teachers are culturally diverse—this has really impacted theway I think and the way I interact with people. There are just so manyideas that flow around in this school. That has been a really big factor inshaping the person I am today.

Bok Wai has studied in CIS for the past 6 years. He is a firm believer ofthe flying spaghetti monster, but is perhaps more known for looking at issueswith deviating views from what is considered commonplace.

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